Elliott Keck is Head of Campaigns for the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
There was no doubt about who was to blame. It was in the first sentence of his opening remarks that Cllr John Williams held up his hands on behalf of the council to explain that the Secretary of State had simply left them with no choice. It was “unfortunate”, as the councillor described it, but nothing could be done.
Discussion continued, questions were asked and concerns raised. But at the end of it, South Cambridgeshire District Council’s politburo decided to continue its four-day week experiment without a vote, without a consultation, and without an end date.
For those lucky enough to not know what I’m talking about – it is a sordid tale – there is a local authority that is currently paying its staff 100 per cent pay for 80 per cent hours, South Cambridgeshire District Council. It claims that this has no impact on actual output, as the council is achieving what would effectively have to be a 25 per cent increase in productivity, despite the whole public sector seeing productivity barely shift in decades. Either it’s an outright lie, or it’s a damning indictment of the shoddy levels of effort, efficiency and productivity in the years preceding the trial. Other claims made involve significant savings from hiring full-time staff where previously pricey agency staff were required. The health and wellbeing of staff is also a key driver of the experiment.
It has been beset by scandal. First, it emerged that the chief executive of the council was studying for an undisclosed PhD on the subject of the four-day week. Then it emerged that she had made drastic edits to a supposedly independent report on the trial conducted by the Bennett Institute at the University of Cambridge, with huge chunks of negative testimony being deleted.
Yet while those were headline-grabbing scandals, for those that truly care about local democracy, accountability, and fundamental principles of representative government, what happened at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday surely tops this. Because on Tuesday, between the four walls of South Cambridgeshire Hall in Cambourne Business Park, it was decided that, despite repeated promises, the four-day week experiment, which was due to end in March, would be continued, effectively indefinitely, without a vote, and without a consultation.
So what happened? Well, Cllr Bridget Smith, the Leader of the Council, had been very clear up until recently that at the conclusion of the trial in March 2024 (it began in January 2023 and has already been extended twice) councillors would get a vote on whether to make the trial permanent. She assured councillors of this in November at a meeting of the full council. But in February a report by the employment and staffing committee recommended that before the vote there should be a consultation, and that the consultation should only be carried out once the council understood “the full implications of any proposed changes from government.” This refers to the announcement late last year from Michael Gove that councils with four-day weeks could face financial penalties. As councillor John Williams said at the cabinet meeting, “we can’t therefore, until we know what those financial impacts are, go out and consult in any meaningful way.”
So the Government is to blame, then, according to the council. Nothing can be done. It almost sounds reasonable. But there was another interesting point to come out of the report by the employment and staffing committee. The report highlights the risk that the longer the four-day week is in place the harder it will be to reverse without a “loss of morale, or a big impact on recruitment and retention.”
That, simply put, is the damning line. The allegation that the council has always struggled with is that this experiment is fundamentally ideological in nature. It wasn’t a genuine attempt to address real issues at the council using a new method. It was driven by a leadership, part of which is literally engaged in postgraduate studies, which is determined, come hell or high water, to achieve its ideological goals.
Unfortunately, the behaviour of the council has only confirmed this narrative, at every step of the way. There are the scandals of course. But there are also the ever shifting goal posts. First it’s about savings on agency staff, but when that didn’t properly materialise, it became about the KPIs. Disappointing data on that means it’s now about health and well-being of staff, although even here results are underwhelming.
Milton Friedman once said “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme.” There are good reasons why this theory so often proves true. Once the programme is announced, and particularly once it becomes embedded, the winners may be few but they are loud, vociferous, and often highly influential in the corridors of power. The losers, almost always taxpayers, are many, but ultimately rely on their representatives for accountability. By refusing to give councillors the vote they were promised, and ensuring the fury of staff if the so-called trial is ever scrapped, South Cambridgeshire district council has removed the last hurdle to making the temporary permanent.
So it’s up to ministers now. It seems that only central government can enforce democratic norms at the level of local government. Shocking really, but that’s the situation we’re in.