Home workers called lazy by councillor as offices downsized

Ian Selby said he was not a fan of the shift to staff working from home

A councillor has branded home workers as "lazy" as his council voted to downsize some of its offices.

South Kesteven District Council approved a £500,000 spend on turning vacant space in Grantham's Savoy Cinema building into a flexible office space.

Most councillors approved but Ian Selby told a meeting working from home "breeds laziness" and harms productivity.

One opponent accused him of making "lazy assumptions".

The full council meeting heard the authority's existing office space needed considerable investment, with one branding its condition "an absolute disgrace".

The move to the top floor of the cinema complex is expected to save around £300,000 a year, and would make best use of vacant council-owned assets, said its Conservative leader Kelham Cooke.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr Cooke said the move would also "provide our staff with that modern open plan flexible office space".

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However, unaligned councillor Ian Selby said he was not a fan of the "cultural shift" towards hybrid working or staff working from home.

"For me, working from home is a culture that breeds laziness," he said.

He said a person he had spoken to believed productivity would fall as people "spent an awful lot of time" getting cups of coffee and food before "slowly walking back to your laptop and forgetting what you're doing".

Mr Selby also expressed concerns the move would make the council less accessible.

The council intends to move into new office space above the town's Savoy Cinema

Labour councillor Lee Steptoe disagreed, having had to teach teenagers for several hours a day from home.

"I was doing my job and I know that there are people in this council, and up and down the country, that won't be eating cheese or drinking wine, they will have been working very, very hard," he said.

"This idea that people working from home are lazy is a lazy assumption from a lazy man," he said.

Although the council approved the move, some members questioned if the space would be better used for community work or town revitalisation projects.