Ministers say get back to the office. So why won’t their own staff turn up?
‘We need them to lead the way’
HUNDREDS of thousands of civil servants are still working from home two weeks after Boris Johnson urged workers to get back to the office to help save the economy.
Departments in Whitehall are said to be ‘ghost towns’ with some seeing just 2 per cent of staff arriving at work this week, according to an audit by the Daily Mail.
Just a few dozen staff were seen entering the offices of the Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions each day. The once-bustling offices can hold a total of 3,700 employees, while just 137 people arrived at a 100-year-old Whitehall building that houses five departments.
On July 17, the Prime Minister announced an end to the Government’s work-fromhome guidance which comes into effect today. He called for employees to return to their desks and pressed on with this yesterday despite delaying other lockdown easing measures. Yet, the majority of the Government’s own 430,000-strong Whitehall workforce is still working from home.
The Daily Mail monitored Whitehall departments between 7.15am and 11am this week and found that even this low estimate appeared generous.
Only 34 people were seen turning up to the Department for Education offices – which could hold up to 2,000 staff pre-pandemic – on Thursday morning. This would equate to under 2 per cent of its London staff.
The Mail also observed just 50 people entering the headquarters of the Department for Work and Pensions at Caxton House in London on Wednesday.
Even fewer arrived on Thursday – a total of 31 – which is fewer than 2 per cent of the 1,700 staff members who usually worked there.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘We need to have a settled message – and the key people that can start that is civil servants. We need them to lead the way.’