Centre for Government Reform research has uncovered that some civil servants are still spending fewer…
Centre for Government Reform research has uncovered that some civil servants are still spending fewer than two days a week in the office, despite rules requiring them to be at their desks at least 60 per cent of the time.
This follows on from our previous research that highlighted how government departments avoid disclosing the true occupancy of their offices by calculating the occupancy from the number of desks occupied in each departmental HQ, rather than the proportion of the total workforce who are in the office.
Our new research showed that civil servants in some departments spending as little as one and a half days a week in the office. With the only government department to have hit the 60 per cent target being the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which has now been abolished by Andy Burnham.
The Department for Business and Trade, for example, claims it has an occupancy rate of 80 per cent. But its London offices in Caxton House and the Old Admiralty building only have space for 1,058 of its allocated 3,699 staff. This suggests a true occupancy rate of just over 20 per cent — meaning that the majority of staff are primarily working from home.
Our CEO Ameer Kotecha, is quoted in the article saying that ministers needed to “come clean and start being straight with the public about the true numbers, rather than hiding behind figures that don’t stand up to scrutiny”.
“Whitehall has spent years telling the public that civil servants are back at their desks. This data shows that isn’t true anywhere in Whitehall, and now that DSIT has been abolished, the one department that actually hit the target doesn’t even exist any more.
“Civil servants are being paid to work in offices they aren’t turning up to. Ministers talk tough on productivity and have issued a mandate that civil servants should be coming into the office a minimum of 60 per cent of the time.
“That is already a very generous arrangement, but our data shows that the average civil servant goes into the office fewer than two days a week. That is a scandal. It is pointless the government issuing hollow targets it has no intention of enforcing. It must start holding departments properly to account.”
You can read the full article in The Times here.