Four-day week council staff sick days down by a third - report

About 450 staff at South Cambridgeshire District Council have been trialling a four-day week since January

Staff turnover has reduced by 36% and sickness by 33% at a council which introduced a four day week, according to a report.

South Cambridgeshire District Council began the trial in January and has ignored government calls for it to end.

The report by a council official was discussed at a committee meeting of the Liberal Democrat-run authority.

Conservative opposition leader Heather Williams questioned the reliability of the data provided to the committee.

The government ordered councils to stop trialling four-day-week schemes in July, but South Cambridgeshire District Council extended its experiment until March 2024.

The Liberal Democrat council said its data suggests the trial is a success, which the Conservative opposition questions

It then issued a "best value notice" to the council to provide robust evidence of the impact of the trial on council services.

The employment and staffing committee was told the trial the council had "succeeded" in recruiting into "typically challenging roles".

Jeff Membery, head of transformation, said "some of our neighbours were having to add extra incentives" to recruit "into hard to fill roles" - something the council did not have to do as a result of the trial - but he also admitted there was "still a lot to learn".

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He said the planning department was hard to recruit for, but since the trial began, "our planning department is getting a lot of interest".

In a series of terse exchanges, Ms Williams said "there is a fundamental flaw in the way" the data has been presented and added that she did not trust a lot of the data it relied on.

She said: "We cannot assume some of the positive things [in the report] are as a result of the four-day week".

Ms Williams said "a lot of work" was needed to make the data reliable.

Report data

• Staff turnover has reduced by 36%

• 97 new members of staff have been successfully recruited

• Sickness has reduced by 33%

• The number of agency staff covering vacancies has reduced from 23 to nine

• Projected net cost of agency staff covering vacancies has reduced by £776,000

• Complaints have reduced by 2.5%

Source: South Cambridgeshire District Council

Liberal Democrat John Williams, lead cabinet member for resources, said the report "seems to support what we've been saying - improving staff wellbeing, recruitment and retention and meaning that we won't be spending so much money on agency staff."

Once the trial comes to an end it will be subject to a review of its effectiveness, he said.

In response to government criticism of the trial, he questioned: "Why are they so afraid the four-day week may be successful in the public sector?"

The Conservatives called for an extraordinary meeting to further discuss the trial, which will probably be held later in November.

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