Ministers could possibly be sued over their demand civil servants cease wfh

Ministers could be sued over their demand that civil servants stop working from home.

Staff in some of the main Whitehall departments want their trade union to work on a ‘legal challenge on equality grounds’ to the requirement that they spend 60 per cent of their time in the office.

They are also calling for staff nationwide to have the right to flexible ‘hybrid’ working – even those on the frontline of key services.

Callum McGoldrick, researcher at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Spoilt civil servants should be reminded that they work for taxpayers, not the other way around.

‘While there is a place for flexible working, this should be at the discretion of managers and, ultimately, the politicians that are held accountable when things go wrong.

Callum McGoldrick, researcher at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Spoilt civil servants should be reminded that they work for taxpayers, not the other way around’

‘Ministers must ensure that whether this vote is passed, it does not prevent departments from being run in the best interests of taxpayers.’

It comes days after members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union working in the Office for National Statistics took industrial action over the order to get back to their desks.

The union has also been campaigning for the civil service to work a four-day week.

The new demands are made in motions to be debated at the PCS’s annual conference in Brighton later this month.

One, tabled by Department for Transport and Department for Business branches in the South East, calls on delegates to note that home and hybrid working ‘reduces stress, enhances work-life balance, improves retention and will attract new staff’.

It says that the union’s ‘default position’ should be that ‘workers must have ultimate flexibility to choose to work from home or the office, including all operational staff where this can be enabled by technology’.

And it states that ‘mandation of attendance levels is unnecessary and unworkable in many instances’ and will ‘adversely impact’ people on grounds such as age, disability and sex.

Ministers could be sued over their demand that civil servants stop working from home (Stock image)

If passed, the motion will instruct the ruling executive committee to ‘oppose mandated workstation attendance levels’ and develop a ‘strategy to promote a legal challenge on equality grounds to mandated attendance’.

In addition, the union would ‘seek a national civil service Home and Hybrid Working agreement’ to ‘promote home and hybrid working, where that is genuinely difficult, through the application of technology and more helpful working arrangements’.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: ‘We have always been clear on the benefits of collaborative face-to-face working, particularly for the development of more junior staff.

‘That’s why we have set out new guidance stating that civil servants across all departments and regions are expected to be in the office at a minimum of 60 per cent of the time. Our latest data shows that all central departmental HQs met or exceeded that requirement.’