A council has voted to permanently adopt a four-day week for staff at full pay following a vote by councillors.

Staff at Liberal Democrat-led South Cambridgeshire District Council have been trialling doing 100% of their work in about 80% of their hours since January 2023, without losing pay.

At a meeting of the full council, 26 councillors voted in favour with nine opposing the policy.

South Cambridgeshire shares some services with Cambridge City Council – waste collections and planning – and the city authority is expected to agree to the working practice at a meeting on 24 July.

South Cambridgeshire is understood to be the first council in the UK to introduce the measures.

The authority said an independent report from the universities of Salford, Bradford and Cambridge highlighted how 21 out of 24 services at the council had improved or stayed the same since the four-day week began in 2023.

The authority said the report also showed the number of job applicants had risen by more than 120% and there were ongoing yearly savings of £399,263, due to reduced agency staff costs.

But the Conservative group had called for more scrutiny of both the trial and the report.

Conservative councillor Heather Williams previously accused the council’s leadership of trying to evade scrutiny and said a residents’ survey had “shown that they have seen a decrease in satisfaction across the board”.

But Liberal Democrat leader Bridget Smith said the trial had been a success due to lower staff turnover and improved recruitment.

Earlier this month she said: “These were particularly acute for us, having to compete with higher private sector pay in an area of high employment and housing costs.”

The council’s Labour group had supported the trial.