England rolls up its sleeves and gets back to work as Whitehall remains a ghost town
ENGLAND rolled up its sleeves and got back to work yesterday while Whitehall remained a ghost town.
Shops and offices across the country reported an increase in customers as the work from home shackles of Covid were unlocked.
Last week, Boris Johnson urged the nation to get back to the office to show we were open for business.
But despite the plea, Whitehall and government departments of the Foreign Office, Home Office and Cabinet Office remained deathly quiet yesterday.
Hardly anyone was seen entering official departments and nearby cafés and sandwich shops reported trade was still quiet.
One takeaway owner said: “We would expect to be packed from breakfast onwards and then have another rush at lunchtime but it’s still dead. No one is coming in.
The only customers we are serving are the tourists and if it wasn’t for them we would go under but even that’s not enough. We need to see people back at work.”
Work from home guidance was ditched immediately in England last week when Mr Johnson made the announcement that he was lifting Plan B coronavirus curbs.
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Covid passports and compulsory face mask rules are due to come to an end in England on Thursday.
Steve Barclay, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, has written to Whitehall mandarins to tell them “it is important that government departments lead the way in getting people back to the office”.
Yesterday, he added: “Now we are learning to live with Covid and have lifted Plan B measures, it’s time to get back to full speed in all parts of Whitehall as well as London.”
But union bosses have criticised the move as they argued in favour of keeping more flexible working arrangements.
Garry Graham, the deputy general secretary of the Prospect union, said: “Wherever they have physically worked, our members in the civil service and wider public sector have made an outstanding contribution to keeping us all safe, protected and supported.
To suggest that staff have not been working hard whilst working from home is a nonsense not borne out by the facts.”
Yesterday Network Rail chiefs said traffic into London stations was three per cent down on last week while out of the capital it had jumped six per cent.
When asked how many civil servants had turned up for work a Cabinet Office spokesperson told The Sun: “I’m sorry, we are not giving that information out.”
An insider said: “Things might improve when the weather gets better in the spring but it’s still tumbleweed in some departments.”
