More Home Office Staff Working From Home than Before Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Plea to Civil Servants to Return to Office

Even more of the Home Office’s civil servants are working from home than before Jacob Rees-Mogg’s crackdown on remote working culture. MailOnline has more.

An average of 46% of of the desks in the Whitehall base were occupied in the last week of June, down from 61% in February.

This is despite the efforts of Jacob Rees-Mogg to pry them from their spare rooms and kitchen tables.

Mr Rees-Mogg’s attempts to end WFH have so far included conducting spot head counts in offices at Whitehall and leaving notes on empty desks in a move which was branded insulting by unions.

The note, printed on government paper with Mr Rees-Mogg’s title, was left at empty desks and read “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon”.

As reported in the Telegraph, a Whitehall source said the Home Office had been “dreadful” at returning to work after Covid.

“With backlogs unresolved and public services underperforming, officials who are refusing to go into work as they are expected to are taking taxpayers for a ride,” they added.

The Telegraph reports the latest data on office occupancy reveals that almost every department has brought more staff back to the workplace since Rees-Mogg’s crackdown.

The Department for Work and Pensions has increased its numbers from 32% at the start of February to 56% at the end of June, while the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was up 59% from 27%.

Worth reading in full.