START PLAYING YOUR PART, TOWN HALL CHIEFS ARE TOLD
TOWN halls were last night urged to ‘play their part’ by getting more workers back into offices to rescue city centre shops.
A Daily Mail audit of councils suggests only a fraction of staff have returned.
Many said up to eight in ten workers will not be expected to return until next year or until the pandemic is over.
Only a few said they plan a drive to get them back in the coming weeks.
We sent the survey to more than 80 councils. Of the 25 that responded, 21 said either only a fraction or less than 20 per cent of office workers had returned.
Several claimed no more than a fifth will return until the pandemic is over due to distancing restrictions.
But critics dismissed this, accusing unions of scaremongering public sector bosses into being overly cautious.
Local authorities in some areas are among the biggest employers.
Their staff provide crucial footfall for businesses that rely on busy offices.
The findings last night led to renewed calls for Downing Street to toughen up its ‘back to work’ message.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘Public servants must lead the way and play their part.
‘Then the Government can tell all those companies that have said “no one is going back until the New Year” that they have a duty and obligation to help the economy.
‘If people don’t return to offices, smaller businesses will crash and burn. Some of these people have probably been out in pubs and restaurants on the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, so why can’t they replicate that in their office environment?’
He also accused unions of scaremongering public sector bosses. He said: ‘The 20 per cent thing is just b*******. They are just trying to damage the Government.’
It is nearly a month since Boris Johnson heralded August 3 as the day ‘work from home’ guidance ends.
He said Britons could return to offices at the ‘discretion’ of their employers.
But the response of town halls deals a further hammer blow to commercial centres starved of customers.
London City Hall normally has 800 people working in its River Thames HQ but sources said only a ‘limited number’ are back. A spokesman for mayor Sadiq Khan said: ‘Guidelines mean that only around 200 staff can safely work from the building.’
Kent County Council in Maidstone said it has ‘around ,500 staff accessing remote technology, which is the vast majority of our office-based staff’. A spokesman added: ‘We do not expect staff who are normally office-based to return on a permanent basis until into next year, except where they need to for business.’
Cambridgeshire County Council in Cambridge said about 3,000 of its 4,300 staff are office-based. Of these, about 80 per cent continue to work from home.
It said they will only allow about 20 per cent to return if distancing guidelines are
to be adhered to. Suffolk County Council in Ipswich has around 2,800 office staff but said only a fraction are back. A spokesman said: ‘Our policy is if it’s working at home, continue to do so.’
Nottinghamshire County Council in Nottingham has 8,000 to 10,000 workers. It said ‘the majority of our office staff will be remaining at home’.
Exeter-based Devon County Council said office workers are ‘not expected to return unless they need to’.
It was a similar story for Cumbria County Council in Carlisle, Somerset County Council in Taunton, Hertfordshire County Council in Hertford and city councils such as Peterborough, Coventry and Barnsley.
It comes after figures this week revealed only around 1 per cent of staff have returned to work in the 63 biggest cities.
CBI boss Dame Carolyn Fairbairn has warned Mr Johnson must do more to get workers back at their desks. Writing in the Mail on Thursday she said: ‘The costs of office closure are becoming clearer by the day.’
There are more than 340 councils in England which employ hundreds of thousands of people.