Nearly £590,000 of taxpayers' money has been spent on asking civil servants how they feel about the office and working from home, The Mail on Sunday can reveal....and I don't say that about civil serpents very often!
The work has been driven by the Government Property Agency (GPA), a quango in charge of all Government office space. It claims to be 'helping transform the way the Civil Service works and reshaping the relationship civil servants have with their place of work'.
Surely the only 'relationship' that counts is 'work gets done, they get paid for it'? If that's happening, who cares where the work is getting done?
Its survey concluded that only three per cent of employees wanted to go back to the office full-time after lockdown.
In which case, can we, the taxpayer, please stop footing the bill for huge expensive offices in London and other major cities?
The GPA calls Leesman a 'world leader in measuring workplace experience'. It told the MoS: 'It is critical that civil servants have a voice that shapes their workplaces so that the spaces we deliver can best support them.'
What about us taxpayers? Don't we get a voice?
The Cabinet Office said: 'These surveys... are used to ensure we can maximise the number of people working in the office. Since 2020 any surveys conducted have not included any questions on working from home. Using independent assessments, we can ensure that money spent on office space delivers true value to taxpayers.'
In other words, the emphasis will be on whipping these people into the office in order to justify having built or leased it in the first place. Why is this so cart before the horse?
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