More than 100 business and charity leaders have written to ministers urging government leadership on moving England toward a shorter working week, after a row over the first English council to trial a four-day pattern.
Local government secretary Steve Reed wrote to South Cambridgeshire District Council — the council that launched the trial — criticising the scheme and raising concerns about performance and value for money. A letter he sent, later leaked to the press, cited an independent assessment that he said showed declines in several housing-related areas, including rent collection, re-letting times and tenant satisfaction with repairs.
In response, the council’s leader, Bridget Smith, strongly rejected Reed’s characterisation. Smith said independently assessed data show most council services either improved or stayed the same during the trial, and that staff have been completing the same workload in 32 hours a week. She added that the council’s financial analysis points to net savings of £399,000 a year, largely because reliance on agency staff has fallen.
Co-ordinated by the 4 Day Week Foundation, the open letter to the business secretary calls for the creation of a working time council to guide a nationwide transition to a shorter week. Signatories include figures from the private sector, unions and civil society who say they have seen four-day weeks succeed in multiple contexts without pay cuts.
Joe Ryle, campaign director at the 4 Day Week Foundation, described Reed’s criticisms as out of step and said the evidence supports the benefits of reduced hours for both workers and organisations. He noted that hundreds of private-sector companies have adopted shorter working weeks recently, and said resistance seems stronger when trials take place in the public sector.
Around 25 other councils are reportedly planning four-day week trials next year. Ministers do not have legal power to dictate council working patterns, meaning they can exert political pressure but cannot ban local authorities from experimenting with working-time arrangements.
Official statistics and sector estimates show growing take-up of shorter weeks since the Covid-19 pandemic. Analysis by the Office for National Statistics found that more than 200,000 workers have moved to a four-day week since the pandemic began. Separately, the 4 Day Week Foundation has estimated that at least 430 UK companies have adopted a shorter week in recent years, covering more than 13,000 employees.
The debate highlights competing interpretations of early trial data and reflects wider interest across business and civic sectors in whether a shorter working week can deliver productivity, staff wellbeing and budgetary benefits at scale.
