Pros
OK benefits: good annual leave, a career average pension, childcare vouchers, a flextime scheme and also an ability to work flexibly by doing a compressed week or nine day fortnight. If you work at county hall there is some parking, access to a canteen (although not the cheapest) and a small shop on site. There is a cashpoint that sometimes works too.
Cons
The County Council has embraced hotdesking meaning staff waste significant amounts of time over the course of a year getting their belongings out of lockers, looking for a desk, cleaning the desk, and then clearing it entirely at the end of each day back in to a locker. The 37 hour week in some departments is just theoretical because there is often far more work to do than it is possible to squeeze in to a week, largely due to departmental cuts meaning staff have been made redundant and the staff that are left are run ragged trying to cover the basics. Managers are under pressure to get more out of their staff to prove that their department is valuable so that they are protected from cuts. Work-life balance is poor and staff are sobbing on the shoulders of their union reps. The sickness policy now states that if an "employee is off long term due to sickness absence and it is not known if or when they are able to return to work, action...must be initiated. This may include dismissal". So if you are long term sick due to the stress you have been put under, they may fire you for being ill with stress. As it's local government everything takes months to happen as officers are not empowered to make decisions and all decisions have to go through a senior management team reporting process, or through the Member lead committee process.