Question
Covid has been and gone, but the Liberal Democrats of Wokingham Borough Council clearly believe in allowing their employees to swap Office for the Lounge, at home. The Public Sector’s most important role should be delivering effective services for the taxpayer, not helping workers to have ‘more’ leisure time in their tracksuits. The Public should be receiving decent services, instead the Liberal Democrat Council have raised Council Tax, cancelled Bin Collections, cut down the grass cutting everywhere, put up Parking Charges, diminished School Bus Services and lost footfall in the town centres.
When will ALL Council staff be back at their office’s desks serving residents, rather than enjoying a relaxed home atmosphere?
Minutes:
Question
Covid has been and gone, but the Liberal Democrats of Wokingham Borough Council clearly believe in allowing their employees to swap Office for the Lounge, at home. The Public Sector’s most important role should be delivering effective services for the taxpayer, not helping workers to have ‘more’ leisure time in their tracksuits. The Public should be receiving decent services, instead the Liberal Democrat Council have raised Council Tax, cancelled Bin Collections, cut down the grass cutting everywhere, put up Parking Charges, diminished School Bus Services and lost footfall in the town centres.
When will ALL Council staff be back at their office desks serving residents, rather than enjoying a relaxed home atmosphere?
Answer
This has to be one of the most outrageous questions ever put to an Executive Member of this Council.
For you to use the difficult financial decisions we have had to take due to the country’s appalling economic situation and the historic low funding we receive from Government to attack our dedicated and hard-working officers is a low point in this Chamber.
Your question is illogical and full of errors, but I will attempt an answer.
Firstly, during the Covid 19 lockdown the Council continued to provide high quality services to residents thanks to excellent use of IT, creative partnership working with the voluntary sector, and dedicated officers prepared to be incredibly flexible to do what was necessary for residents.
Like many other organisations, we are building on this success with the development of a Modern Workforce Strategy. This will be centred on ensuring that staff are based at the location where they can best serve their residents. The principles for this work were agreed unanimously by the cross-party Personnel Board in June, supported, Jackie, by your Conservative colleagues.
I do not have time to go through the full benefits of these arrangements, but they include saving the Council a very considerable amount of money; helping us to fight climate change by reducing unnecessary car journeys; and widening the number of highly qualified staff who can apply for our roles. If you would like to understand more about this, can I refer you to the minutes and recording of the Personnel Board on 21st June 2023.
Your factual errors need to be corrected. We have not cancelled bin collections. We have not diminished school bus services. Our town centres are thriving. And although we had to raise Council Tax because of low government funding, that is exactly what happened every year any of us can remember under the previous Conservative administration.
I’ll end with an unprecedented request – or perhaps offer. You have the right to a supplementary question, but I would urge you to consider using it instead to apologise for the unwarranted and utterly unsubstantiated slurs you have made against our hard-working officers.
Supplementary Question:
Of course, I know officers work hard at home but the NHS says that working from home can cause stress, a lack of motivation, anxiety and uncertainty. The BBC reported in June that 81% of under 35s feared loneliness from long-term home working. What is the Council doing to support staff who prefer to work in the office and find their colleagues are working from home, and find that Council offices are invariably empty, lacking the supportive social environment of a busy office environment?
Supplementary Answer:
The Council continues to support all of our officers wherever they work. A lot of our officers do find working from home very beneficial. A lot of our officers have a hybrid working environment which enables them to balance time working from home where they can get focus time to concentrate, with time working in the office. The Modern Workforce Strategy will look at where we can place our officers best to best serve our residents. We will look alongside that, and the Personnel Board will be very engaged with looking at the welfare of our staff and how we can best support them.