Working from home permanently adopted by parts of NHS bureaucracy
Working from home has been permanently adopted by parts of the NHS bureaucracy as staff don’t use ‘hot desks’ in the office
- Around 30 of 42 NHS England’s Integrated Care Boards have instituted ‘agile’ or ‘hybrid’ working policies, or are currently in the process of implementing them
- ICBs manage billion-pound plus NHS budgets and employ more than 20,000
Working from home has been permanently adopted by large swathes of the NHS bureaucracy, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Responses to Freedom of Information requests show that 30 of England’s 42 NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) have instituted ‘agile or ‘hybrid’ working policies, or are in the process of doing so.
ICBs, which were formally established last July, manage billion-pound-plus NHS budgets and collectively employ more than 20,000 staff.
The MoS also asked each ICB how many of their core staff were in the office on a particular mid-week day – Wednesday, November 17.
That was the day Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his Autumn Statement, warning the Government was having to take ‘difficult decisions on the public finances’.
Working from home has been permanently adopted by large swathes of the NHS bureaucracy (Stock Image)
No ICB had recorded how many staff were working from home but half provided figures for the number of office desks booked via ‘hot-desk’ systems.
Of the 21 ICBs providing data, on average just 15 per cent of staff had booked an office desk for November 17. At Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICB, which has 316 employees, just three desks were booked – less than one per cent of their staff.
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘If so few staff at ICBs are meeting face-to-face regularly, that raises questions as to whether they can properly oversee the vast amounts of NHS funds in their care.’
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