Senior councillors in South Cambridgeshire will discuss whether the council should monitor staff working second jobs during its four-day week trial.

South Cambridgeshire District Council has been trialling a four-day working week on full pay since January 2023.

The trial came under fire from the previous Government, which repeatedly told the council to end it and issued the local authority with a Best Value notice.

In a report published in June, wellbeing specialists Robertson Cooper asked employees at the council what activity they had spent most time on during their paid day off. In April 2023, just 1% of employees said other paid work – but this rose to 16% in April 2024.

But South Cambridgeshire said that in the 2024 survey, 62 of the 69 people who said they were carrying out other paid work were in the waste service. Waste staff did not join the trial until June 2023.

The council said that many of these staff had second jobs, such as an evening cleaning job, before the trial started.

Following the Robertson Cooper survey, the council asked 170 staff at its Waterbeach Depot about secondary employment, and all staff with a second job said they had it before the four-day week trial.

Independent councillor Dan Lentell has put forward a motion urging the council to ensure staff are following its code of conduct ‘both in spirit and in letter’ during the trial, and to ban employees from carrying out jobs on their paid days off that could ‘conflict with council duties or undermine public trust in the integrity of the council’s workforce’.

The motion also says South Cambridgeshire should immediately introduce a policy preventing staff from offering or selling their professional services back to the council using time made available by the trial.