Call to bring council staff back to 'empty' offices (2025)

A councillor has urged staff to return to the office.

Large numbers of council staff in Salford are working from home, a councillor has claimed, leaving council offices without “anybody working” in them.

Conservative group leader Robin Garrido claimed the issue is causing problems at the town hall, because councillors are not able to get hold of staff quickly while carrying out their work on behalf of residents.

Salford council said it has 3,500 members of staff in total, and office space available to workers who want to use it, including the civic centre in Swinton.

It has a ‘hybrid working’ approach, which allows managers and teams to choose the best place for different types of work, with ‘no set figure’ for how many people can work from locations outside offices.

But during a council meeting on March 19, Coun Garrido called for council workers to return to the civic centre.

“I’m really quite concerned that since Covid the percentage of people working from home is still very substantial,” he said.

“Whilst I agree that it is useful to have people working from home as and when necessary, I also think it’s necessary, particularly with senior officers, to have them working at the civic centre for as long as possible during the working week.”

The Conservative councillor said it “takes time” to get hold of council workers who are not in the office, with members having to track them down through phone and email instead.

“Going back to pre-Covid when everyone worked in the building, if I was walking down the corridor I would bump into officers, and then an hour or two later I'd get a result back,” he added.

“I'm not saying they're bad at responding, I'm saying because they're not always here you've got to contact them wherever they are and it's just not as convenient, if you speak to most backbench councillors they say exactly the same thing.”

Last year, Coun Garrido called to use “empty” offices at Salford civic centre to provide accommodation for those facing homelessness, and in the long term to demolish the newer part of the building to create new homes.

The council said at the time that the option of using the civic centre as accommodation was considered, but the plan was 'not a viable option' due to the 'extensive work' needed to make it suitable for residential use.

Labour Coun Jack Youd, Salford's deputy city mayor, said technology has made sure council staff can be "accessible whatever their work location."

“Our hybrid working principles are set out in Salford City Council’s MyWork programme, which is about modernising and adapting how we work to help improve the quality of work done and the outcomes delivered for our residents," he added.

“Services review working practices regularly to make sure that this is the case and the degree of flexibility to work this way depends on the role of the job and services that we deliver.

“We do not have a working from home policy or working from home contracts."

Coun Youd explained that the council's work programme helps managers and teams "choose the best location and work setting for individual focused work, collaborative work and customer facing work."