Four-Day Week
This survey was open for responses from 9am on Monday 27 January to 11:59pm on Sunday 23 March.
So you know what to expect, this consultation contains four sections.
These are:
- Questions about you
- For residents, you will answer questions about your experiences of our services during the four-day week. Residents will have up to 13 services to rate. You will only rate services you say have received from us.
- If you're from a businesses, community or voluntary group, you will also receive questions about your experiences of our services during the four-day week. Businesses, community and voluntary groups will have up to 10 services to rate. You will only rate services you say you have received from us.
- Comments about the four-day week
- Thank you and what happens next
The length of the consultation depends on how many services you say you have received from us since 1 January 2023. If you have received a couple of services from us, it will likely take around five minutes. However, if you have received many services from us and wish to rate them all, and provided detailed comments, the consultation will of course take longer to complete
Phases
Phase 1: Up to this point
The Council announced plans to trial a four-day week – where people deliver 100% of their work, in around 80% of their hours, for 100% of their pay – to help address acute recruitment and retention issues.
The idea of a four-day week at the Council is to improve services by filling hard-to-fill posts permanently, rather than relying on more expensive agency staff, which can also be disruptive. For example, when bin lorry drivers leave, it can disrupt collections when new drivers are learning bin routes or agency drivers cover them as replacements are trained. 11 lorry drivers left the Council in 2022, but only five did in 2023 after bin crews joined the four-day week trial.
The initial three-month trial ran from January to March 2023. Following a detailed and independent review of performance during those three months, the trial was extended for a further year until the end of March 2024. Since then, the Council has continued to work in this way as further information was awaited from Government.
During the Local Government Finance Settlement consultation for 2024/25, which was published in December 2023, the previous Government consulted on the potential of using financial levers, to come into force from April 2025, to discourage councils from adopting four-day weeks. Until there was more clarity on this, Cabinet members considered it not feasible for the Council to carry out a meaningful consultation and decide on next steps.
The new Government’s Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025/26, which was published on 18 December 2024, made no mention of any financial levers that were threatened by the previous Government. This means that the Council is now able to consult.
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