Four-day week in London: Lambeth prepares the capital’s first council trial

Lambeth is a densely populated slice of south London: Brixton, Stockwell, Clapham, Vauxhall. The Greens have run the council since the May elections, and they are now preparing something no council in the capital has tried — a four-day working week for staff, with no cut in pay.

What exactly is proposed?

A trial, not a settled decision: staff work four days instead of five, pay stays as it is, and services to residents are promised to continue unchanged. Neither the start date nor the number of staff involved has been announced.

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Council leader Martin Abrams frames it as money rather than kindness to officials. Councils are losing people, and constant recruitment is expensive: he puts the cost of turnover to local authorities at tens of millions of pounds a year, and sees a four-day week as a way to keep staff and lift productivity.

Who else is looking at it?

Lewisham mayor Liam Shrivastava points to South Cambridgeshire, where the council moved to a four-day week permanently after its trial. Hackney mayor Zoë Garbett says she is willing to look at it. So this is not one borough but three neighbouring councils under Green leadership.

What do opponents say?

The Conservative candidate for London mayor, James Cleverly, put the question bluntly: why should Londoners who work five days a week pay their council for an extra day off?

The government has taken a hard line. In December last year the then communities secretary Steve Reed told English councils not to introduce a four-day week, warning that a council paying full salaries for reduced hours could be judged to be failing and have its powers taken away.

Does it actually work?

This is not the first attempt in the UK. The large 2022 trial with 61 companies ended with most of them keeping the arrangement. In South Cambridgeshire the council reported lower agency staff costs and no drop in service quality. Opponents answer that a council is not a company: some services have to run every day, and one department’s day off lands on another.

What does it mean for people in Lambeth?

For now, nothing: the trial has not started. If it does, the questions will be practical ones — opening hours, how long a request takes to answer, permits, street cleaning. Those are the numbers the council will have to answer with, not intentions. The government’s reaction is a separate story: Westminster has tried to stop plans like this before.

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