Latest news with #SouthCambridgeshireDistrictCouncil
Daily Mirror
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Controversial four-day week made permanent in UK-council first
The council implemented a four-day work week to help with hiring and keeping staff, as well as to cut down on expenses A controversial four-day working week at a district council has been made permanent following a trial in a UK-first. South Cambridgeshire District Council staff have been doing 100% of their work in 80% of their hours since January 2023. Last night (July 17), 26 councillors voted in favour of making the working pattern permanent, with nine opposing. The district council is believed to be the first council in the UK to introduce a four-day week. Lib Dem leader of the council Cllr Bridget Smith said the move heralded a "very bright future" for the council and represented "smarter" working for the 21st century. However, the Conservative opposition argued it was a "slap in the face" for taxpayers to pay for council staff to have an extra day off every week. The four-day week trial was introduced for desk-based staff at the district council in 2023. Under the trial, staff receive full pay for working 80% of their hours, but are expected to complete all of their work in that time. The council introduced the four-day week to aid staff recruitment and retention and reduce the spending on agency staff. Council services have continued to operate for at least five days a week. A report published ahead of the debate said 21 of the authority's service areas had improved or stayed the same since the four-day week trial began. But ahead of the meeting, the Conservative opposition questioned the report's independence, saying it was "co-authored by a 4-day week activist". The report said nine areas saw a "statistically significant improvement", including in the percentage of calls answered at the contact centre, the percentage of complaints responded to within timescales, and the percentage of emergency housing repairs completed in 24 hours. The council said if performance variations caused by the Covid pandemic were discounted, every service monitored had improved or stayed the same. The authority also said there has been an overall annual net saving of £399,263, which it said was mainly due to filling vacancies permanently, rather than paying for agency workers. However, some areas showed a "statistically significant decline," including the percentage of housing rent collected, the average days taken to re-let all housing stock, and the percentage of tenant satisfaction with responsive repairs. Cllr Smith told councillors at a full council meeting on Thursday (July 17) that the four-day working week worked and had 'exceeded' expectations. She said: "This is not about working less; it is about working smarter. We are living in the 21st century, and this is the way of working for organisations like us: smarter working, not longer working, and that delivers improvements. It is not perfect; where we fall short of residents' expectations, we will work harder to improve, and now we can do that." However, Conservative Cllr Dr Shrobona Bhattacharya said she had received more than 300 emails from people worried about the four-day week. She argued it was an "unfair system," noting that no one was stopping people from working a four-day week but arguing they should receive four days' pay for doing so. Conservative opposition leader Cllr Heather Williams told the meeting that key performance indicators did not cover everything the council does. She pointed out that the report stated that the analysis of services could not prove that the four-day week directly caused the identified results, as other changes had been made. She said: "We have a choice. We can show residents that we support them. It's a slap in the face when people are taking on increased council tax while their money is spent to give people a day off every week. "It's not right, it's not fair, and there is no reliable proof that it works. If this goes ahead, trust between the council and residents could be broken for good. This has got to stop."
Telegraph
06-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
A four-day week could be the final nail in our economy's coffin
South Cambridgeshire District Council, after a lengthy trial, is to adopt a permanent four-day (32-hour) week. On Friday it published a report supposedly justifying this. The report claimed that its exciting new way of working had saved the council just under £400,000 in a full year. The savings came from sharply reducing the number of voluntary leavers and attracting 120 per cent more applicants for vacancies. This reduced the need to recruit and train new staff, and to employ agency staff to fill any gaps. Moreover self-reported staff health, wellbeing and motivation are shown to have improved, with 'burnout' – that strange Gen Z affliction unknown until a few minutes ago – being greatly reduced. And scores on 21 out of the council's 24 'Key Performance Indicators' were maintained or improved. So what's not to like? Few of us are against shorter working hours as such. As we have got richer over the last century and a half, the normal working week has halved. It will probably shrink further over the future – as the campaigning Four Day Week Foundation is eager to point out, citing a number of private sector employers already moving in this direction. Nevertheless, a number of things bother me about the South Cambridgeshire claims. One is that the apparently improved productivity may be in part a statistical artefact, a product of the way KPIs are drawn up and measured. For example, 'planning applications completed on time' or 'invoices paid in 30 days' look to be indicators which could easily be gamed. Even if the productivity increase is real, it may be a temporary phenomenon – perhaps a modern example of the early 20th-century 'Hawthorne effect' where observing workers' response to new work arrangements leads to a change in behaviour which dissipates when the practice is normalised and oversight removed. Another concern is that, if it has proved so easy to get five days' work done in four days, there must surely have been plenty of scope for reorganising work within the existing working week. As the TaxPayers' Alliance has pointed out, why could productivity not have been increased without changing the working week, with money saved by cutting the number of employees? This is a national issue, as public sector productivity growth has been abysmal for years. Inadvertently, perhaps, the South Cambridgeshire experiment reveals just how much slack there may be in local authorities. The council makes great play in the report of the trial's 'positive picture' – for the organisation and employees. However not much information is provided about the response of end-users of council services – businesses and local residents. What information there is suggests that significant numbers of users may be dissatisfied over matters such as bin collections, communication difficulties and repairs to tenants' accommodation. The council says that it was going to investigate this further, but they couldn't run a survey because the previous government forbade them to do so. The cost savings to the council, at a time when local government faces severe financial constraints, have been headlined by supporters of the four-day scheme. But these gains probably arise from what economists call 'first mover advantage'. Within commuting distance of South Cambridgeshire District Council are four other district councils plus the upper-tier Cambridgeshire County Council. As South Cambridgeshire, tied to the same national pay scales, is offering a better package, it is not surprising that fewer of its staff want to leave, and that job adverts attract more applicants. But what you can't assume is that if every Fenland council adopts a four-day week, there will be a similar financial gain for all of them. The latecomers would not be offering anything which you couldn't already get in Cambourne. It seems very possible that the shorter week will attract copycats far beyond South Cambridgeshire. Trade unions such as Unison, a long-time supporter of the 4-day week and the organiser of around 30 per cent of local government workers, will press for it to be applied across the sector. The government's Employment Rights Bill makes flexible working the default: any employer resisting a claim for new ways of working will have to have a very strong case that a change will damage its business. If Unison organises a test case in another part of the country where staff demand a shorter working week, they will be able to use the South Cambridgeshire case as evidence for its feasibility. Our soft-centred employment tribunals will probably agree. Nor will this be the only possible knock-on effect. Remember that many workers cannot feasibly increase their productivity much when working shorter hours. Teachers, emergency workers, dentists, ambulance drivers – if they work fewer hours, extra staff would have to be employed to generate the same output, so employers would have a defensible argument against the change. But that doesn't end the matter. For these workers will rightly point out that the South Cambridgeshire arrangement is in effect an increase in hourly pay of between 15 and 20 per cent. If other workers can't be switched on to a shorter week, they'll be demanding whacking great pay increases to compensate. This all looks like another load of trouble at a time when the economy already seems to be heading for the knacker's yard. The touchy-feely crowd at Cambourne Business Park don't know what they're potentially unleashing.
The Independent
04-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Council could become first to permanently adopt four-day working week
A council trialling a four-day working week has reported improvements across multiple services, according to independent research. Since the start of 2023, South Cambridgeshire District Council has been trialling a four-day working week where staff complete all of their work for full pay in an effort to hire and keep more staff. Twenty-one out of 24 council services have either improved or stayed the same since the trial began, according to the report which was compiled by university researchers. The council said the improved services ranged from repairs to the time it takes to update benefit and tax support claims. 'There is now more consistency through lower staff turnover and improved health and wellbeing,' the Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, Councillor Bridget Smith said. As well as filling staffing gaps, the trial saved nearly £400,000 a year by cutting down agency staffing, the Liberal Democrat-led council said. 'This is saving hundreds of thousands of pounds for Council taxpayers, not only because we've filled posts with our own staff, but by reducing our recruitment costs,' said South Cambridgeshire District Council's Lead Cabinet Member for Resources, Councillor John Williams. 'It's now for all District Councillors to weigh up all the evidence and decide how we should proceed.' The report findings come after the council had received two government notices over concerns of its trial of a four-day week. The most recent notice expired in November and was not renewed by the Labour government. However Conservative opposition councillors have raised concerns that residents remain unsatisfied 'I want to assure residents that we have heard you loud and clear and agree with the overwhelming 77 percent residents and 88 percent of businesses who did not support the 4 day week,' leader of the council's Conservative group Heather Williams posted on X. 'Conservatives will do all we can to STOP this madness.' The council's Scrutiny and Overview Committee will review the report on 14 July, with a final decision to be made by full council three days later.
Telegraph
04-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Lib Dem council set to adopt four-day week
A council is set to become the first in the UK to adopt a four-day working week after claiming its pilot of the scheme was a success. South Cambridgeshire district council began a trial in 2023 in which employees carried out all of their work in 80 per cent of their previous hours. A report published by the Liberal Democrat-run council on Friday said that 21 out of 24 services had either improved or stayed the same since four-day weeks came into force. But critics have accused the council of a lack of transparency over the pilot, which has seen waiting times for calls rise and as many as one in six employees carry out other work on rest days. The research, which was carried out by academics from Cambridge, Salford and Bradford universities, found job applications rose by more than 120 per cent during the two-year pilot. 'Nowhere to hide' According to the analysis, nine of the 24 services offered by the council improved during the first two years of the trial, while three declined and there was little difference to the other 12. However, it also found a 'statistically significant' drop in how satisfied businesses were with the council's commercial waste, licensing, environmental health and planning services. Residents also said they were less satisfied with bin collections, the customer contact centre and the elections service than before the trial commenced. The findings have put added pressure on the council to scrap the policy amid fears it does not represent the best possible value for money for residents and taxpayers. Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'South Cambridgeshire council has nowhere to hide after this bruising consultation completely collapses its case for the four-day week. 'Wheeling out yet another piece of propaganda masquerading as an independent report will fool no one, given the overwhelmingly negative response from residents and frosty reception from businesses. 'Town hall bosses need to now face the music, apologise to local taxpayers and bring back the full-time council.' Previous analysis by the council found average call centre times rose by 14.5 per cent and just four of its 12 key performance indicators were on target. The previous Conservative government had threatened to fine any councils that used four-day week working practices. But since Labour took power a year ago, the council has received notably more sympathy from central Government. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Communities Secretary, declared in November that a four-day working week was 'no threat to the economy'. Speaking in Parliament, Ms Rayner said: 'We don't dictate to councils how they run their services. 'We work with councils and I think [Kemi Badenoch] should be able to work out that flexible working is no threat to business, no threat to the economy … In fact, it would boost productivity.' Cllr Bridget Smith, the leader of South Cambridgeshire district council, welcomed the report on the 'innovative' scheme, which she said had been set up to tackle recruitment issues. 'These were particularly acute for us, having to compete with higher private sector pay in an area of high employment and housing costs,' she said. 'There is now more consistency through lower staff turnover and improved health and wellbeing.' The council will now decide whether to become a permanent four-day week employer at its next full meeting on July 17. A health and wellbeing survey carried out last year found 16 per cent of staff at the local authority now undertake paid work during their extra day. The questionnaire also found that half of all employees (50 per cent) used the day off for life admin, closely followed by housework.
Edinburgh Live
12-06-2025
- Business
- Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh council should trial four-day workweek after success elsewhere
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info A four-day workweek for city staff should be considered to help fill empty roles and aid with poor health, according to a councillor. Several councils in the UK have expressed interest in testing a four-day workweek, with South Cambridgeshire District Council being the first to trial it. Now, Green councillor Claire Miller wants Edinburgh to join that list, saying it could provide a new way to help with staffing and morale. In a motion to full council next week, Miller says officers should look at whether the city should trial it – and bring data together on how staff are doing with the current five-day week. In it, she writes that the council has 'long-term challenges around budget pressures, recruitment into 'hard to fill' roles, use of agency and overtime, and indicators of poorer worker health such as illness absence rates.' Further, she says that unions in the city support four-day weeks, with them citing health and wellbeing benefits that they argue come without productivity losses. Miller wants council officers to collate information on staff retention, health and productivity, among other factors, by September. Additionally, she wants them to evaluate four-day workweek trials in other 'relevant organisations', to see if they can inform a possible trial in Edinburgh. South Cambridgeshire District Council was the first in the UK to trial a four-day working week, with some staff working 32 hours a week but getting paid for 40 from March 2023. It is now considering making the change permanent, with the 15-month trial among 450 office and waste collection staff being found successful. An academic study of the trial found that it reduced turnover by 39% and saved the council over £300,000 in agency worker fees. Additionally, it found that a range of council services either saw no change or improvements in delivery. Regular planning permission applications were cleared a week and a half earlier, and about 15% more major planning applications were cleared within recommended timescales. In only two areas – council rent collection and reletting council homes, performance decreased. Staff said that the shortened workweek had helped their morale and physical health, with staff complaints falling during the trial period. Additionally, less council staff were found to be going on benefits. However, one local councillor raised concerns about council staff working second jobs on their time off. Some 16% of staff taking part in the trial were found to be doing other paid work in their free time – but a council survey saw most of these staff members say they had started doing this before the trial began. In 2024, the UK government withdrew opposition to a four-day working week for English local authorities. Previously, it had published guidance that effectively prevented councils from trying it, saying it did not 'offer value for money for residents'. Among other councils, the Blaenau Gwent and North Yorkshire local authorities are exploring either a trial of, or a permanent shift to, a four-day week. Cllr Miller's motion will be discussed at the next full Edinburgh council meeting, set to take place on Thursday, 19 June, which can be viewed here.
