{"id":330998,"date":"2025-12-23T04:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/330998\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T04:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:43:07","slug":"councils-warned-against-adopting-four-day-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/330998\/","title":{"rendered":"Councils warned against adopting four-day week"},"content":{"rendered":"

“They should get on with the job and make sure residents get the best service possible five days a week,” the source added.<\/p>\n

In the letter to the councils, which was reported by The Telegraph, external<\/a>, Reed says that local authorities should not be offering “full-time pay for part-time work”.<\/p>\n

Reed previously expressed his “deep disappointment”<\/a> in the first UK council to adopt a four-day working week.<\/p>\n

South Cambridgeshire District Council, which is led by the Liberal Democrats, became the first to make a permanent move to a four-day week in July after it began trialling a shorter working week in 2023.<\/p>\n

Reed said there had been a decline in performance in the council’s housing service and he sked how the local authority would “mitigate” this.<\/p>\n

The government can intervene in any council if it is deemed to be failing.<\/p>\n

Last year Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also rejected civil servants’ demands for a four-day working week.<\/p>\n

Critics of a four-day week say it would reduce productivity and slow economic growth but others disagree. <\/p>\n

A trial in the Scottish public sector<\/a> this year found an increase in productivity and improvements in staff well-being.<\/p>\n

The Autonomy Institute, which was commissioned by the Scottish government to co-ordinate the pilot, found that 98% of staff judged morale and motivation to have improved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“They should get on with the job and make sure residents get the best service possible five days…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-330998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}