Agenda item

Consider joint report by Executive Director, Corporate Improvement & Economy and Service Director HR & Communications.  (Copy attached.)

There had been circulated copies of a joint report by the Executive Director, Corporate Improvement & Economy, and the Service Director, HR and Communications, outlining plans to support home-working as the safest way of working for office staff for the foreseeable future and long-term for those who wanted to formalise the option.  The report also provided details of creating COVID-safe office spaces and associated arrangements to provide an alternative for staff who were unable to sustain homeworking on an ongoing basis and enable staff to use offices as touch-down spaces where this was helpful in undertaking their work.  The report explained that since the start of lockdown in March this year, the vast majority of former office-based staff had worked effectively and productively from home and maintained the provision of services.  The support from staff in adapting, readily and suddenly, to this way of working had been invaluable and deserved great credit.  These informal arrangements had been in place, gradually evolving, for a period of 6 months.  With the pandemic continuing and the prospect of a second wave developing, it was expected that these arrangements would remain in place for some considerable time.  In recognising that staff safety was paramount, that sustaining Council services was critical, the absence of a vaccine and that staff were keen to know what their working arrangements would be in the medium to long term, the following arrangements were being put in place.  Home working, wherever possible, would remain as the predominant way of working for all office-based staff for the foreseeable future and as long as COVID-19 was still present.  This applied to officers and Elected Members and recognised the need for continuing use of offices by some staff e.g. social care using COVID-safe arrangements.  COVID-safe flexible office space would be made available through the phased reconfiguration of office accommodation at Council Headquarters, Galashiels Paton St. and Hawick Town Hall.  Consideration would be given to developing similar touch-down office space in all localities.  The intention was to provide a blended approach, providing staff with the ability to access flexible office space when there was a requirement to be in offices.  This blended approach would also apply where the domestic arrangements of staff did not permit effective home working, where internet connectivity or other circumstances meant that it was not always possible to work from home, or where systems and the need to deal with hard copy documentation required staff to access offices.  In making offices COVID-safe, the Corporate Management Team’s priority remained keeping staff and the wider public safe whilst being able to sustain the Council’s services.  At the same time, the arrangements built on the lessons learned from the Council’s experience since March this year and aligned with Council’s Fit for 2024 longer term strategic aims for the office estate.  The Service Director HR and Communications advised that staff opinion would continue to be obtained by further surveys and there would be a further report to Council in November.  In response to a question regarding additional costs for staff working from home, the Service Director advised that this was being looked at and it was likely that each staff member would be offered a sum of up to approximately £275 to purchase any necessary furniture if the Council could not supply that directly.  With regard to tax relief, staff could apply to the Inland Revenue for an allowance but no weekly payment would be made by the Council. 

DECISION

AGREED:-

(a)     to note the arrangements for accommodating home working and creating flexible COVID-safe offices; and

(b)    that a further report on the Council estate would be brought to the November Council meeting.