Calls to pay heating bills of home-working civil servants

CIVIL servants should have their heating paid for by the Government so they can continue working from home, union bosses have said.

The FDA union, which represents more than 22,000 senior officials, has produced a study of officials’ views on remote and hybrid working.

It is scathing of ministers’ “blinkered rush to get civil servants back to offices”, which has left officials feeling “patronised and infantilised”.

The report found that some civil servants were left “feeling like they’re back at school” because their departments had conducted or threatened “school registers” of who was present.

At the top of its four recommendations is that “departments and government give all employees who work remotely or in a hybrid model an allowance to help towards increased energy and utility costs, as well as the necessary equipment for remote working to be safe and effective”.

It is the latest in a Whitehall war of words since Covid rules were scrapped, with Jacob Rees-Mogg, then government efficiency minister, leaving notes on desks and enforcing strict quotas.

Surveys by the FDA found 74 per cent of members did most of their work from home, while 87 per cent preferred to work at least three of five days a week from home in the future.

However, the study identified clear drawbacks of working from home including social isolation and that it creates an “always-on culture” stripped of the “right to disconnect”.

As a result, the Government should consider a “wide-reaching hybrid-work strategy” similar to that in Ireland, the report says, with “remote-working hubs” across the country to let officials see their colleagues when they wish and enhance the levelling-up agenda.

The report concluded that the benefits of hybrid work outweighed the negatives and civil servants are “almost unanimous” in their “profound dislike” of back-to-office drives and it risks undoing strides in equality.