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| Quote: Revealed: Civil servants get extra three days holiday if they work over 36 hours a week Details of the generous terms available to Whitehall officials were leaked in an escalation of the increasingly tense relationship between ministers and civil servants. A growing number of officials are understood to be working nine-day fortnights by cutting short their lunch breaks and extending normal hours by staying in their offices until 6pm. Civil servants are also allowed to count delays in arriving for work because of late trains or traffic congestion towards their contracted working week. Many of these working practices would not be permitted in the private sector, where most people are contracted to work up to 40 hours a week or more. A government source said: “Most Fridays, some departments are like ghost towns. It is a very generous system with hardly any controls.” Last night Whitehall sources said that these “anomalies” would be addressed in a forthcoming Cabinet Office plan to reform the Civil Service. One aide said: “When we came into office we inherited various arrangements from the last government. We are reviewing these to ensure that they are reasonable and sensible.” Details of the “flexitime” arrangements are contained in leaked Whitehall documents that lay bare the generous nature of the taxpayer-funded contracts. They are likely to provoke anger in the private sector after senior ministers including William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said companies should “work harder” to help boost the economic recovery. | |
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... qus_thread
I'll declare an interest here and say that I work in the civil service, but this article really is shoddy journalism. Can anyone explain to me how working extra hours so that you can take the time off in lieu equates to getting "three extra days holiday"?
Some of the comments are even more laughable, presumably none of commenters have worked in the civil service and thus have no understanding of the work at all. Apparently I sit there and do nothing all day, if only!
For clarity, the standard working week in the civil service is 37 hours, this does not include lunch breaks (which are 36 minutes, giving a 40 hour week in total). If you work more than this, then you can accumulate time which can be taken off at a later date, we call this "flexi". The maximum "flexi" you can accumulate is three days (depending on your standard weekly hours), or you can go up to three days into deficit - if you do this time must be made up within four weeks (the standard "flexi period"). Many business streams, such as letters and forms have "core hours" i.e. the minimum number of hours you can put in a day/week before even considering taking flexi, this is to try and keep turnaround times down.
All of that strikes me as perfectly reasonable, am I wrong?
