Cllr Tricia Clarke (left) and Cllr Roulin Khondoker

GET the jelly and ice cream out, council staff have been given an extra day off to celebrate their birthdays.

And Labour councillors now say they want employees to get more “take a break” days off after the unprecedented pressures of working through the coronavirus pandemic.

The idea of more rewards and incentives for Town Hall staff beyond their contractual annual leave was discussed at a council meeting on Thursday, where it was confirmed that Islington had offered all of its workforce the chance to take off their birthdays – or a date close to their birthdays – as a bonus.

Local authorities have been considered by many as a “fourth emergency service” after the challenge of keeping things going during the Covid crisis, and councils across the country have been looking at ways they can acknowledge the effort that has been put in.

Islington was the first to offer up birthdays as days off but council chief executive Linzi Roberts-Egan said it was a one-off policy and will not be repeated in future years.

“It cost several hundreds of thousands pounds to give everybody the day off, which is absolutely right and proper if the council agrees that’s the way forward,” she said.

But members of Islington’s policy scrutiny committee said that the idea of extra days off should be explored further.

Councillor Roulin Khondoker, who chairs the Islington Labour Group, said: “While it’s difficult in the public sector to offer masses of pay rises, I guess the small thing that could possibly be offered is a few days off. I wonder if it could be phrased in a way where it benefits the whole teams in one go – so if it could be set days off where it’s ­given above your annual leave.”

Linzi Roberts-Egan

She suggested having a month of “four-day weeks or having those four days off in one go” and said that this would be “so the whole team can then just calm down in one go”, adding: “I appreciate that different teams work in different ways, but it’s just a nice way to say ‘take a break, come back fresh’.”

Councillor Tricia Clarke asked whether the birthday offer would be extended, adding that “it’s only one day a year”.

She told the meeting: “I know when I used to work for British Telecom, we used to have these days, half days, a couple of those a year, where I can’t remember what they were called. It’s an incentive, it’s a well-being thing. I think it was shopping days before Christmas or something like that. It’s just where you are appreciating the staff.”

Ms Roberts-Egan said: “When I was a teacher a long time ago, we had shopping days. The children would not come into school and we’d go off shopping. I’m glad we don’t still do that now in the education system – but nevertheless, I do take the point.”

She said that the council was looking at arrangements for the future and how to arrange the working week, with more flexible options likely.

One hundred members of staff were feeding into a council review, Ms Roberts-Egan said, adding that questions included: “Can we create time where teams can have time off together? So they might want to socialise together – or reduce the amount of email traffic through a team, just to give them that kind of pressure valve release.”

But she told councillors: “The annual birthday was just a one-off… I know that Cllr Comer-Schwartz [Council leader, Kaya Comer-Schwartz] and the executive are thinking through what other sort of reward, whether that’s financial or otherwise, could be offered, particularly to the frontline staff.”

Julie Foy, the council’s director of human resources, said Islington had “one of, if not the most generous leave allowances in London”.

Beyond staff Covid cases, the Town Hall’s rate of short-term sick leave was declining, she added.