A referendum on the four-day week trial at South Cambridgeshire District Council would be “meaningless” the authority’s leader has said.
Cllr Bridget Smith said the planned consultation will focus on people’s experiences of using council services, rather than asking a yes or no question on whether people support the trial.
She said gathering information on people’s experiences would be “very useful” to help the authority make a decision on whether to keep the 4-day week permanently. However, opposition councillors criticised the fact that people would not be asked whether they want to “fund a 4-day week”.
Consultation to go ahead
The district council introduced the 4-day-week trial for desk-based staff at the start of 2023, before later expanding it to include staff working in the waste collection service.
Under the trial, staff receive full pay for working fewer hours, but are expected to complete all of their work in that time. The authority began the trial to see if it would help with the staff recruitment and retention problems it was facing.
A public consultation will open on Monday 27 January and will ask people to share their views on using council services before and during the 4-day-week trial. Members of the public completing the survey will also be asked if they would be more or less likely to apply for a job if a 4-day week was offered.
‘Meaningful information’
Cllr Smith told councillors at a Scrutiny and Overview committee meeting last Thursday 16 January that the consultation had been put together with the help of an independent organisation. She said the consultation would give the authority “meaningful information” on people’s experiences using council services.
Cllr Smith said: “The purpose of this consultation is to ascertain what the experience has been of our residents, our businesses, our partners, our stakeholders, during the 4-day-week trial.
“Has there been any change in people’s experiences of our services as experienced prior to the trial starting, and as experienced during the trial.
“This is very useful information, as it will either support or not the vast amount of evidence that has been amassed for us about the trial by universities in Cambridge and Salford.
“Additionally, there is a legal requirement for us to consult. It is very important we fulfil that requirement, and it is important to do so in a way that is legally compliant and meaningful. It is very important to us to know what our customers of all types think of us, and what their experiences have been.
“This, with all the other information we have – the surveys of staff, the KPI data – will help us as a council and cabinet to make an informed decision – during this summer probably – whether we become a four-day-week employer.”
The opposition’s view
However, the leadership faced challenges from opposition councillors on the proposed consultation.
Cllr Tom Bygott said the “obvious question” of asking people whether they support the 4-day week was not in the consultation.
He said: “We are not going to have any view whether, as a taxpayer, people want to fund a 4-day week, but we are going to get a view whether they would want to be an employee working in that way.”
Cllr Smith said Cllr Bygott was suggesting a referendum, which she argued would be “meaningless”.
She said: “We are a service provider. What is meaningful is people’s experiences of our services, so that is what we are doing.”
Cllr Smith added that there were text boxes in the survey where people could leave whatever comments they wanted about the trial. However, she stressed the consultation was not a referendum and said she would “not allow it to become a referendum, because that is not meaningful and not useful” for the council.
Think back to 2022…
Cllr Heather Williams highlighted that people were being asked in the survey to compare their experiences of using council services before and after the trial. She said she understood why the authority wanted this information, but said they were asking people to remember what happened years ago.
Cllr Williams said: “I know I reported a bin being missed, but whether I did that in 2022 or in 2023, it is too long of a gap.”
She suggested it might have been better to have conducted a survey of people’s experiences before the trial started, to have a base set of data to compare to, as she said people will “really struggle” to accurately remember what they were doing years ago.
Cllr Smith said it was “nonsense” to suggest the authority should consult on whether to carry out a trial. She added that the district council had hoped to hold the consultation back in March last year, but said the “threat of financial penalties” made by the previous government meant they could not do this.
Cllr Williams argued the district council could have consulted on people’s experience of using its services, even after the initial three month trial.
Cllr John Williams, lead cabinet member for resources, said the survey was intended to “add value” to other performance measures which the district council had been using to gauge the effect of the trial. He said the survey would help the authority “check” these measures were giving “correct information”.
Disagreements continue
A week on from the discussions, disagreement between the two parties about the consultation continue. To the referendum point, the South Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat Group insists “the survey includes many questions to gather feedback and views” and there is an opportunity for contributors to say whether they agree or disagree with the 4-day week.
A spokesperson for the group said: “The survey includes free-text boxes throughout for additional feedback. There is not a referendum type question as we want to ensure we have more detailed feedback on whether four-day-week working has had an impact, positive or negative, on services.”
Meanwhile, a press release issued by South Cambridgeshire Conservatives last night (Wednesday) complained its calls for a referendum have been “snubbed” by the Lib Dems.
Cllr Williams said: “The administration’s claims that a referendum would not be useful for the Council are disappointing. This demonstrates a complete contempt for the feelings and pockets of residents shelling out 37 hours pay for 32 hours work – all when the Lib Dems are planning to increase Council Tax by the maximum amount again.”
South Cambridgeshire District Council says the consultation platform will go live on Monday 27 January.
Reporting by Hannah Brown, Local Democracy Reporting Service. Additional words from HI HUB.
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