Andy Burnham has made moving civil servants oop North a key plank of his promise to revive prosperity across the country. But the great mandarin migration is hardly a novel idea – and, if attendance figures are anything to go by, relocating our intrepid public servants has not exactly worked wonders so far.
Take the MHCLG campus in Darlington. Figures for the most recent working week available show that only 44 per cent of staff assigned to the office actually turned up in person. That equates to 74 people out of a total assigned workforce of 168.
Then there is the UK Statistics Authority quango and its various non-London campuses. How, Mr S hears you ask, is attendance looking there? Well, average attendance as a percentage of full-time employment for the week commencing 1 June 2026 was as follows: Newport 19 per cent, Darlington 7 per cent, Manchester 15 per cent and Edinburgh 9 per cent.
Shadow Housing and Local Government Minister Paul Holmes asked: ‘Is the two day week set to become a key plank of Manchesterism?’
If moving civil servants north is a key plank of Burnhamism, these figures suggest it may already be going south.
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