Shared Internet Cafe for Health Workers and Council

Bristol City Council explores options to allow staff to work at cafe-type workplaces whenever possible.

16:45 13 August 2021

Bristol City Council is exploring its options to allow staff to work at internet cafes rather than commuting to City Hall or Temple Street. If proposals are approved, thousands of council and health service staff would be allowed to work alongside each other in shared internet cafes. 

 

Head of HR Mark Williams, said: “Part of our ambition is to work with service partners, particularly partners in health.

 

“That is one of the things we are exploring – local areas having collaborative places for partners to work, such as high street, cafe-type workplaces, if it’s possible.

 

“The vast majority of our staff are content to continue to work from home so this gives us an opportunity to review the way we run our office estate and that is what we’ve been doing.

 

“We are not receiving a clamour of requests to return.”

 

Committee member and Labour group leader Cllr Steve Pearce said: “The technology has been astonishing over the last 18 months. It has worked really well.

 

“Guess what? The sky didn't fall in as a result of Covid, and that is brilliant.

 

“There are opportunities and traps that we must avoid falling into.

 

“It is not about working from the office/working from home, it’s about working from the office/working in a decentralised way, so you might not work from home.

 

“The council’s property portfolio might allow us the opportunity to have decentralised working across the city so you could pop to the end of the street to go into a council internet cafe that is shared with other large organisations to offset some of the costs.”