Civil servants are faking office attendance and failing to set foot in the office for years on end after in-person attendance never recovered from its collapse during COVID-19. The Telegraph has the story.
Whistleblowers have exposed a work-from-home scandal gripping the public sector, saying employees are shunning the office in defiance of rules that require them to attend the workplace at least three days a week.
Insiders say managers have “no control” over remote staff who are “taking advantage” of flexible working arrangements, with one saying Whitehall offices were “like the Mary Celeste” on Fridays.
Some staff, including at HMRC, are alleged to have faked in-person working by connecting to their office Wi-Fi from a nearby car park before returning home.
The phenomenon has become so commonplace that senior managers at the tax office dub it a ‘drive-by login’.
Labour is now facing calls for an “immediate” inquiry into public servants and their office attendance, with the Government being accused of “rewarding part-time work with full-time pay”.
One civil servant said staff showed up to work for only a few hours before going home. It meant “you’re down for attending for the day and in theory you’re working in the office”, he said, but in reality staff were working from home.
He added it was common for “a lot of people to be in for a couple of hours and disappear”.
Some workers are said to be scared of the prospect of Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister and forcing a full-time return to the office.
An HMRC official told of how office working had collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not recovered since.
He said “a lot of bad habits” were formed during Covid, adding: “You can go years at a time without seeing certain colleagues.”
Internal absence records obtained by the Telegraph confirmed this, showing some civil servants were staying away from the office for more than two years in some cases.
Analysis of working patterns at HMRC revealed that 3,195 of its workers had not been in an office for between six and 11 months, with 992 not attending for a year to 23 months. There were 182 workers who did not go to work in-person for two years or more.
HMRC said some of the absences were caused by sickness leave or an adjustment to working patterns for staff with disabilities. The department employs more than 70,500 people.
The tax office has also been accused of allowing customer service levels to collapse. Last year, a report by MPs found that almost 44,000 taxpayers were cut off after being on hold for over an hour with HMRC call handlers.
At Land Registry, some 200 staff had not been into the office for more than six months. Of these civil servants, 131 had not been into an office in over a year and 78 workers had not attended for more than two years.
The figures, accurate as of February, excluded those marked as “long-term absent” for health or other reasons.
Land Registry, a government agency that millions of people selling or buying property depend upon for official documentation, currently has delays of 18 months or more for some services, while routine updates to property records can take as long as three months.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister previously responsible for civil service reform under Boris Johnson, said: “[This] is why I was always so hostile to working from home, because it became apparent that public sector productivity was collapsing because of [it].”
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Come off it, they just aren’t working. A bright friend of mine several years ago worked as an EO at the tax office. He had completed his allotted work in the first couple of hours each day. Bored stiff, he left. Now, they can just work from home. Much less boring watching Netflix or whatever.
If civil servants and the likes of HMRC and Land Registry did a decent job it would not matter where their staff worked. But their performance is abysmal and in truth was before Covid and skirking at home has only made it worse.
Hear, hear!
Why is this necessary? A number of Muslims working in the civil service shouldn’t be noteworthy because who gives a stuff what ( if any ) religion you follow. So why do they require an actual ‘network’? The infiltration is blatant;
”The Civil Service Muslim Network (CSMN) is the sole cross-government, departmental umbrella network representing and supporting departmental Muslim networks and civil servants.
CSMN’s vision is to help create a truly inclusive workplace where civil servants of all backgrounds fulfil their potential and thrive, where every voice is heard, to deliver world-class policy and public services. A Civil Service that mirrors the rich diversity of the public it serves.
Core Aims;
Represent, support, connect and champion Muslim civil servants across government.
Generate a better understanding of Islam within the Civil Service and challenge discrimination and misconceptions.
Establish a shared understanding of the CSMN vision and priorities.
Create a network of senior allies who recognise the lived experience of Muslim colleagues and help improve religious literacy and respect.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-staff-networks/civil-service-muslim-network
Anyone who has experience running a business of some scale will know that there is constant tension between how much work the business tries to extract from it’s employees and how little work employees would like to get away with doing.
It’s a constant battle. There is literally no limit to the number of justifications and rationalisations employees will deploy to try to shift that balance in their direction. That’s the game.
In a private business financial accountability ultimately stands as a bulwark against the relentless pressure from employees.
But in the public sector everyone is on the same side. There is very little to pushing back. Whatever integrity and sense of shame public employees have is about it.
Excellent summary.
Wow. There’s almost the same number staffing HMRC as all the armed services.
That’s a very optimistic assessment of what’s going on once they’ve left the office. Whatever they’re doing at home, working is likely to be only a small component.
The house of lords is just as bad, clock in then go right home.
You mean that in reality, staff were goofing off!
Do what Ronnie Reagan did to the Air Traffic Controllers who went on strike in 1981 for more pay and better conditions. He fired all 13,000 of them and gave them 48 hours to back down and return to work. Declaring the strike illegal under Federal law, 11,300 refused to return, so Reagan carried through with his threat and banned them from ever working for the Federal Government again. Their Union (PATCO) was decertified. Clinton lifted the lifetime ban 12 years later. Some balls on good old Ronnie eh?
Can you imagine the spin put on that by the MSM if Trump was the one sacking them?
Given the low level of trust in the US legacy media following years of Far Left lies I doubt it would make any difference to the people.
If performance at department level has collapsed, then the managers in question should be handling this at a staff level, ie individual performance assessments with appropriate reward or penalty.
home based snd flexible working should be a benefit to those staff who meet their objectives. Those that don’t should be office based, or even got rid of. The workers that do good work will soon drop their standards unless they see poor performance being managed.
Indeed though I tend to think that if your staff need to be in the office to be productive you may have the wrong staff. While a certain amount of “stick” is needed sometimes, managers shouldn’t need to be standing over people to make them work. I guess the office environment MAY be conducive to better productivity for some – perhaps the easily distracted – but that has not been my experience. Productive people tend to be so regardless of where they work, ditto unproductive. You’d hope that civil servants would have self discipline and professionalism. Hopefully some do.
How about we get senior management to be accountable to ministers for PRODUCTIVITY. If the ministers are not asking how this is measured, or the senior management are not able to answer, they are not doing their jobs properly. Were these people PRODUCTIVE when in the office? By focusing on WHERE they are working, and not WHAT they are doing, we are missing the point.
Well partly, these people are hopelessly unproductive and modtly need to be sacked… the point is they have been instructed to be in the office they are not but they pretend to be, that is fraud, znd should bea sackable offence.
No private company would accwpt this behavioir.
And yes we are all well aware of your views on home working, and agree partly.
Yes that’s a good point – I don’t know if I would call it fraud exactly but it’s certainly not playing with a straight bat.
Google says the Civil Service was 4,000 at the end of the 19th century when Britain had a huge Empire.
If there was some real will, the CS could be cut by 80% (for starters…). The best need to be retained, perhaps with more pay. The others can leave. It has become an expensive care in the community programme.