UK civil servants to have computers monitored to get people back to office

Whitehall civil servants will have their computers monitored in a bid to get people back to the office permanently post-Covid.

Civil servants in the Cabinet Office, which has around 2,700 staff, have been told that management will monitor how often they log on to their computers to track how much they work from home.

It comes after business secretary, and former Cabinet Office minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg started a drive earlier this year to get civil servants back into the office post-Covid.

This included sticking notes that read “sorry you were out when I visited … I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon” on empty desks.

Staff occupancy in the Cabinet Office hit 42 per cent during August, but recent figures has it around 66 per cent.

The Sun reports that mandarins in the Cabinet Office will be tracked through wi-fi and computer log-ins to get a better gauge of how many people are in the department at a time.

There is now a target for civil servants to work from the office at least four days a week.

Andrew Pepper-Parsons, head of policy at charity Protect, said “monitoring of staff devices is unlikely to rebuild trust between civil servants and ministers” in the wake of partygate.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We have been consistently clear that we want to see office attendance across the civil ­service consistently back at pre-pandemic levels.”