Get ‘job for life’ civil servants back to offices

Iain Duncan Smith’s article last week urging the Civil Service to set an example and end working from home to get back to the office made interesting reading.

The Civil Service seem to be a law unto themselves these days. Sarah Healey, a high-ranking official, believes that, as well as employing her, we are supposed to provide her with a good work-life balance.

All of us ordinary people struggle to offices/warehouses/ factories to put food on the table.

She has a job for life. If she won’t return to work, then sack her so she can spend more time with her Peloton.

David White, Basingstoke

Why haven’t the civil servants been ordered back to the office? What happened to the days when people felt accountable to their line managers and actually wanted to do a good job?

Sam Davies, Warwick

The move to working from home was a temporary measure due to extreme circumstances. Any refusal by civil servants to return to their desks should be taken as a breach of their terms and conditions of employment and thus be a sackable offence.

Y. Nixon, Buckinghamshire

This sounds like a Cabinet Minister trying to offload responsibility. People who are working from home are working: that is not absenteeism. I can access all the drives I have access to in the office, along with my email, at home and I’m sure civil servants can too.

B. Young, London

Government Ministers may be content to allow their employees to work from home but they should remember that they are in effect only the management. In any organisation, the company bosses are answerable to the shareholders – in this case the public who voted for them – and it is their legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of those shareholders.

Jack Butterworth, Oldham

I think we have a public duty to get back to work. We keep being told that working from home is more efficient – it’s plainly not. As a healthcare professional,

I’ve worked all through this pandemic and even took on extra work as a vaccinator as I felt I wanted to do something to help us out of this situation.

We should all be pulling together and return to work to get the country back on its feet again.

D. Paterson, Reading

After reading your report last week about the number of civil servants who are still working from home, on Monday morning I opened an email response to a query I had made to a Government department.

It stated: ‘Please note the Parliamentary Secretariat Team will be supporting the government guidance and will be working from home until further notice.’

Government guidance to work from home is the reality in contrast to the rhetoric.

Bob Russell, Colchester