Civil servants are allowed to ignore new government rule on working in the office at least three days a week due to a lack of desk space

• Advice said Whitehall staff must spend 60% of their working time ‘face to face’

Civil servants have been given permission to ignore new government guidance requiring them to work in the office at least three days a week due to a lack of desk space.

Advice issued last week said all Whitehall staff must now spend 60 per cent of their working time ‘face to face’ in the office.

Previously, civil servants were encouraged, rather than compelled, to work from the office for at least two or three days a week after Covid lockdown rules were fully lifted in 2022.

But new guidance issued to Whitehall departments that saw office space sold off during the pandemic says staff are needed in only for 40 per cent of the working week – or two days out of five.

Officials from the Department for Business and Trade told staff that the three-days-a- week guidance sent out last Thursday was ‘subject to estate capacity’. Managers are currently considering whether three days a week is viable due to the ‘pressures on our estate’, they said.

Civil servants have been given permission to ignore new government guidance requiring them to work in the office at least three days a week due to a lack of desk space (Stock image) 

Last year former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured) announced the Government would sell off £1.5billion worth of state-owned buildings in the coming years 

Last year former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the Government would sell off £1.5billion worth of state-owned buildings in the coming years – partly in response to civil servants being resistant to returning to the office full-time.

An investigation last summer found many Whitehall departments could barely accommodate half of full-time staff.

At the time, Freedom of Information requests revealed that the Department for International Trade had only 708 desks for more than 3,000 staff.

Less than a third of the 2,707 staff in the Department of Health and Social Care could fit into their office, while the Home Office, the Department for Transport, the Business Department and the Department for Education all had less than half the required desk space needed if every staff member wanted to work in the office.

One insider said: ‘It’s an absolute shambles! They’re making us come into the office one day a week extra, but they don’t have enough desks for everyone.’

READ MORE: Civil servants are ordered back to the office for at least three days a week as Rishi Sunak targets Whitehall’s WFH habits

They also warned of a mutinous feeling within the civil service, with staff already struggling to book desk spaces when coming in just two days a week.

Another added: ‘This 60 per cent figure isn’t going to be reached. They’ve sold off desk space – this just isn’t going to happen.’

It comes as some civil servants have been given the green light to work remotely from overseas.

Staff at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero are among those who can apply to work abroad for a maximum of two weeks a year.

The civil servants’ FDA union has argued that many of its members have connections outside the UK and should be eligible for ‘international remote working’, according to The Telegraph.

No 10 has strongly supported the back-to-the office drive.

A spokesman said the new guidance ‘underlines that and makes clear a bare minimum expectation that we think is appropriate’.

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