The Minister for Local Government Lee Rowley has asked a Cambridgeshire council to end its four-day working week trial ‘immediately’, claiming it could be breaching its legal duties.
South Cambridgeshire District Council ran a pilot of a shorter working week between January and March 2023 – the first local authority to do so. This was extended by 12 months in May after initial analysis revealed the arrangements were reducing costs while still delivering “excellent services to residents and businesses”.
The council said that prior to the trial, it had been spending around £2 million a year on agency staff to manage its recruitment and retention challenges. Since the trial, its annual wage bill has decreased by £300,000. A number of staff who might have changed employers have also stayed on, it said.
In May, the council agreed to run the trial until the end of March 2024. But Rowley has written to council leader Bridget Smith with a formal request to end the “experiment” immediately.
The letter revealed concerns about the impact of the four-day week on local taxpayers, claiming the council should be “cutting backlogs, answering queries and improving efficiency”.
Four-day week trials
Four-day week trial results show 92% will continue policy
“I strongly believe in the ability of councils to innovate and find new ways to discharge their responsibilities,” Rowley wrote.
“Removing up to 20% of the capacity to do those activities is not something which should be acceptable for a council seeking to demonstrate value for money for its taxpayers and residents.”
He also claimed that the trial could breach the council’s legal duties under the Local Government Act and said the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities would “shortly be issuing clear guidance”.
Smith responded: “This is a trial, but we have already seen strong independently assessed evidence which showed that performance was maintained, and in some cases improved, in the first three months.
“During the first three months of the trial, we filled four permanent posts that had previously been impossible to fill [and] this has reduced our annual bill by £300,000.”
She said that recruitment had been “positively affected” in quality and number of applicants, thanks to the attraction of the four-day week arrangement. Around 450 staff are taking part in the trial.
Under the trial, staff complete 100% of their work in 80% of the time, for 100% of pay. The council has been measuring the impact on staff’s health and wellbeing via surveys and using performance measures to keep a check on service levels.
The Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge was asked to independently review the data from the trial, to ensure it was analysed without any risk of bias.
It found that nine out of 16 areas monitored showed substantial improvement compared to the pre-trial period, while seven operated at similar levels or saw a slight decline.
The Institute said that no areas showed any areas of concern in terms of performance.
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In a recent trial of around 60 UK business of a four-day week, 92% decided they would continue with a shorter working week.
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