Home working

19 October 2022

Your request 

• please could you tell me the number of council staff who are partially or fully working from home at present? Please could you express this number as a percentage of the total council workforce.

• please could you tell me the number of laptops purchased for council staff who are partially or fully working from home since March 2020. If possible, please could you state the make and model of the laptops.

• please could you tell me the amount of money spent on all IT items e.g., laptops, headsets, monitors to allow people to work from home since March 2020.

• please could you tell me the amount of money spent on desks and chairs to allow people to work from home since March 2020.

Our response

• specific data is not held.

The Covid-19 pandemic restrictions saw a huge increase in people across the country working from home. Following the lifting of restrictions, we learned lessons from the last two years, including the big technological improvements that enable staff to work flexibly.

Covid-19 remains in our community, and as we know it has had a disproportionate impact on our Black, Asian and multi-ethnic communities. Managers are working with their teams to give them the support and reassurance they need to understand the importance of coming into the office.

We are requiring council staff to spend at least two days a week in the borough, while noting that many of our staff have worked in the borough almost daily throughout the pandemic – including our social workers, parks officers, street cleaners and others.

Prior to the pandemic, we had reduced our office count from 14 buildings to two, saving £4.5million per year. The last piece of work as part of that project is turning our former office in Brixton Hill into new homes, including many for social rent, and a new home for the Lambeth Achieves.

We will continue to invest in the technology that allows council staff to best do their jobs in support of our residents, in a way that is efficient and ensures we remain connected to our communities.

• approximately 1492 laptops, Models Lenovo Thinkpad  X13, Lenovo Thinkpad L14, Lenovo Thinkpad X12 and others
•  approx £1.32 m
• We purchased and supplied desks to staff at home. As a whole we didn’t purchase new chairs for staff, simply supplied the existing ones from the offices.