Benefits of a four-day week are ever clearer, despite Steve Reed’s stance

Steve Reed did not acknowledge that the vast majority of the council’s services were not adversely affected by the trial. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

In his stern letter to South Cambridgeshire district council, the housing secretary, Steve Reed, criticised the decline in “key housing-related services including rent collection, reletting times and tenant satisfaction with repairs” during its trial of a four-day working week.

The independent report he refers to is a dense 104-page document packed with tables, graphs and complex terminology, but its findings are not too difficult to decipher – the vast majority of the council’s services were not adversely affected by the trial.