£30m bill to help the civil service work from home
From cables to footrests...
MORE than £30million of taxpayers’ money has been spent to help civil servants work from home during the pandemic.
Major government departments and quangos paid millions of pounds each on IT equipment and office furniture for their staff, it has emerged.
Some also appear to have paid well over the odds – including a water watchdog that splashed out almost £180 on a simple cable that can be found for just £5.99 online.
And the quango responsible for dealing with nuclear waste also splurged nearly £500 on footrests.
It comes amid growing concern that officials have been enjoying life away from Whitehall and failing to do their jobs properly.
A whistleblower revealed this week that thousands of emails from Afghans trying to flee their country as it fell to the Taliban were unread because of a work from home culture at the Foreign Office.
And the top mandarin in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport admitted she preferred to work from home as it allowed her to spend more time riding her expensive Peloton exercise bike.
Last night Joe Ventre, digital campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Bureaucrats using public money to kit out their home offices will horrify hard-hit taxpayers.
‘Civil servants understandably required equipment to work during lockdown but paying over the odds for items is a slap in the face for privatesector workers. If mandarins insist on forking out large sums to go remote long-term, unnecessary office space should be sold off to meet the cost.’
Freedom of information requests submitted to 107 Government departments and agencies by The Spectator magazine found that at least £33.3million has been spent on home-working equipment between March 2020 and September this year.
The highest-spending bodies were HMRC (£7.9million) followed by NHS England (£5.9million) and the Land Registry (£2.5million).
Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs spent £2.8million despite only having 3,000 staff – the equivalent of more than £900 for each worker.
The Water Services Regulation Authority also splashed out £179 on one HDMI cable while the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency spent £499 on eight footrests – or £62 each.