Leeds: Rising energy bills may see council staff return to office

Rising energy bills may see more Leeds City Council staff return to the office, a meeting has heard

Council staff in Leeds may flock back to the office in winter to keep energy bills down, a senior officer has said.

Many Leeds City Council staff have been based at home because of financial pressures and commuting costs, director of resources Neil Evans said.

But come September they may decide it was cheaper in the office, he said.

His comments came during a meeting where councillors queried whether the authority's hybrid working system had kept services running smoothly.

Like many workplaces, Leeds City Council has offered staff a mixture of home and office working following the pandemic.

Speaking at a scrutiny meeting, Conservative councillor Billy Flynn said he wanted to see proof of how effective the hybrid arrangement had been for the public.

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Mr Evans said the council had to be flexible as it tried to recruit and retain staff and that home working in some form was likely to stay, the Local Democracy Service reported.

He added: "As you're asking the question, 'prove to me it's as good', I've got lots of staff saying, 'prove to me I need to come in'.

Mr Evans said his opinion was that there was "a need for regular contact because of the quality of relationships between people, development of new staff".

But, he added the challenge "of showing those things are necessary is something staff are [asking for]".

Mr Evans said in areas like the processing of council tax, the authority could tangibly see there had been no change in performance since hybrid working was introduced.

But other council services were harder to measure, he said.

The meeting was told staff surveys had found strong support for hybrid working.

But Councillor Flynn said employees should not "dictate" policy if services were not keeping up to pre-pandemic standards.

He said: "We've done survey after survey of our staff, but I've not seen one survey of the public of whether or not they think they're getting as good a service as before.

"Obviously we've got to look after our staff, but this is a public service, not a private service."