The leader of Leicestershire County Council wants people "back in work" and has committed to getting more council staff back into the office in a bid to limit working from home for employees.

Reform's Councillor Dan Harrison spoke out after party leader Nigel Farage called for an end to the work-from-home culture earlier this month. Cllr Harrison said a return to working in an office would help build a "sense of community" for staff, claiming that working from home was "another world".

Talk of potential change comes as the government has launched a consultation on flexible working arrangements, including a "reasonableness test" on hybrid working and potentially allowing employees to take their employer to court if an "employer has unreasonably rejected a request".

At the time of writing, Leicestershire County Council currently has 26 hybrid working jobs up for grabs on its website, with roles offering "flexible working" as well as "hybrid working, depending on the requirements of the role and the service".

Reform UK leader Mr Farage recently made headlines by lambasting the country's working-from-home culture.

At a rally in Birmingham, he said: "It's an attitude change that Britain needs. An attitude change to hard work rather than work-life balance. An attitude change to working from home.

"People aren't more productive when they're working from home – it's nonsense. They're more productive being with fellow human beings and working as part of a team."

Cllr Harrison told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he was "concerned" about the working from home model and has said he's committed to getting more staff into the office "when it's feasible".

advertisement

He told the LDRS: "I want people back into work. There's efficiency, and there's the mental health side of it.

"People create communities and friends at work, whether it's someone's birthday or all sorts. It's a proper community. Once you break it up and it's all email or you're ringing, you're in another world".

Cllr Harrison said it was "impossible" to achieve the "efficiency" due to working from home, and that it was the "correct way".

He said: "These people [council staff] are paid by the public. It's the public purse, and we have to be responsible for managing it.

"I'm not responsible for the staff but I'm responsible to make sure we're getting value for money. I come from management and if you're not managing, you're not managing. If you can't see [employees], how can you manage?

"You can't be a manager if you don't see who and how you're managing and what levels of work they are doing. Is that a day's work or is that a week's work?

"I'm very, very keen to get staff back to work and address concerns about their mental health because it's well recorded that some people are stuck in a small room in their house somewhere. It's not the best way to spend hours and days working if you don't have interaction with other people.

"We're paying hundreds of millions of pounds to staff, and we've got to be responsible with it."

advertisement

Cllr Harrison said he would "hope" to get staff back into the office when it was "feasible to make it work correctly".