Council staff at Brixton town hall and across Lambeth can now spend three working days per year volunteering with local charities and community groups.
Nearly 3,000 employees are being encouraged to spend the time with sleeves rolled up away from their offices at youth clubs, sports teams and lunch clubs, meaning a potential total of 9,000 volunteer days.
Any Brixton or Lambeth charity or group can bid for help through the scheme, which is being held up by council chiefs as an example of Lambeth’s “co-operative council” model.
Cllr Steve Reed, council leader, said: “Community groups do fantastic work right across Lambeth, but they often tell me they could do even more if they had more volunteers.
“At the same time, people sometimes tell me the council can feel remote from the local community. I think it’s a great idea to get the council’s employees out of the town hall and into the community so they can hear directly from residents what problems they are facing and then give their time to help fix them. This will be good for our community and good for our employees, and it’s a real example of the cooperative council in action.”
Staff will be expected to make sure this does not affect their main jobs so there is no negative effect on frontline services.
Note that Lambeth Council are doing this at the same time they are slashing budgets for full time staff and suggesting they be replaced by volunteers. But I doubt someone spending three days a year at their local adventure playground will compensate for the highly skilled staff Lambeth fired last summer. And we know from Lewisham that libraries run by volunteers are barely used. Lambeth Council could fund public services with professional staff. Instead they come up with silly gimmicks like this to disguise their cuts