British refuse to copy Europe’s return to the office

The majority of staff on the continent are back at their desks, but cautious UK keeps working from home

BRITONS are continuing to work from home more than any other major European country, figures have shown.

Only one in three British workers has returned to the office since the Government began its push to get people back at their desks.

In France, 83 per cent of office staff are back in the office, while 76 per cent have returned to work in Italy, according to a survey by investment bank Morgan Stanley. In Spain and Germany, 73 per cent and 70 per cent of workers are back in the office respectively. In the UK, it is 34 per cent.

Of the Britons working from home, nearly half are doing so five days a week. In France, the figure is 15 per cent and 19 per cent in Germany. On July 17, Boris Johnson announced the Government would change the guidance on working from home and using public transport.

It came into effect on Saturday. However, expectations of a mass return to work were dashed this week. A number of big companies, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, have told staff they can continue working from home until January.

Google and Facebook have said staff would stay working from home until summer 2021. Government ministers and Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, are concerned that low numbers returning to work will further damage the economy.

In a meeting with Tory MPS last month, Mr Bailey reportedly spoke at length of his concerns that the “fear of using public transport is really holding back the recovery because people aren’t going into their office”.

An MP in the meeting said at the time: “He used the Bank as an example and said often he is one of only a handful of staff in the Bank every day – that thousands of people work there but only 80-100 are coming in every day.”

Alex Chisholm, the chief operating officer of the Civil Service, last week wrote to all Whitehall departments saying it was time to “accelerate the return to the workplace”.

However, as many as four fifths of civil servants are currently working from home, while some believe they will not have to return full-time to the office until next year. It comes as Citizens Advice warned that parents, carers and former shielders are more than twice as likely to face redundancy as the general public.

One in six working age adults said they had lost their jobs over the past three months, a survey of 6,015 by the charity has found. By comparison, 48 per cent of those who have been shielding because they are clinically extremely vulnerable, and 39 per cent of parents or carers, said they had lost their jobs in the same period.