12 2GM Saturday September 5 2020 | the times
News
The head of the civil service has urged
officials to return to the office and said
that working from home risked limiting
“innovation and sustained common
purpose”.
Sir Mark Sedwill, the outgoing cabi-
net secretary, and Alex Chisholm, the
civil service’s chief operating officer,
have told departments that they want
80 per cent of the staff to be back in by
the end of the month on a rota basis.
Shaun Bailey, the Conservative can-
didate for London mayor, said that
working from home risked damaging
people’s career prospects. He said it was
“impossible” to build relationships on
video conferencing and added that
people were missing out on friendships.
There is mounting concern in gov-
ernment about the economic damage
being caused to city centres by the in-
crease in working from home in the
wake of the coronavirus crisis.
Boris Johnson has been pushing offi-
cials to return to work but has been met
with strong resistance by the unions,
which have said that forcing people to
return to work is illegal. In a letter to
government departments Sir Mark and
Mr Chisholm said that there were “sig-
nificant benefits” to returning to work.
“We have seen a reduced level of
social interaction among our col-
leagues, with the loss of some of the
spontaneous interaction and cross-fer-
tilisation between teams that drives in-
novation and sustained common pur-
pose,” they said. “There have also been
challenges with bringing on board new
or inexperienced colleagues and limita-
tions in the ability to mentor and devel-
op our people, particularly those earlier
in their careers.
“In short, it is the government’s view
that on the whole there are significant
benefits to be gained from working col-
laboratively in an office environment
and where possible colleagues should
now return to the office in line with
Covid-secure levels.”
They said that new officials were par-
ticularly missing out because of the dif-
ficulty in mentoring them while people
were not in the office. They are “strong-
ly encouraging” staff to return to work
on a rota system and suggested that 20
per cent of staff could return five days a
week, 30 per cent for three days a week
Universities will have outbreaks in the
coming term and students heading
home for Christmas could spread the
virus, government advisers said.
The Scientific Advisory Group on
Emergencies (Sage) said outbreaks in
higher education were “very likely” and
it was “highly likely” there would be at
least one significant outbreak before
the end of next year.
Outbreaks in the coming months
that peaked “towards the end of term”
posed a greater risk than cases rising as
students returned to university, it said.
“It may be necessary for institutions
across the HE [higher education] sector
to take co-ordinated action in Novem-
ber to prevent seeding and disseminat-
ed outbreaks in December,” Sage said.
Universities should consider provid-
ing “dedicated accommodation” forOutbreaks
‘are likely at
universities’
Kat Lay
School coach tours of the Western
Front battlefields have formed an in-
delible memory of the scale, sacrifice
and horror of war for British children.
The pandemic brought overnight
tours of the European battlefields to a
halt this year and now threatens to rob
children of that experience.
A remarkable trench system recreat-
ed in a farmer’s field in Kent has
stepped forward as a possible saviour
after opening to schools.
Robin Schaefer, historical editor of
Iron Cross magazine, helped to run
school tours to the Western Front for
years before the pandemic. “On the day
the travel ban was announced, we
already had coach drivers in Calais and
we had a school driving to the Channel
ports and we had to stop everything in
its tracks while the kids were en route,”
he said. “It’s very difficult to plan for the
future so we decided we need to come
up with something here in the UK.”
Mr Schaefer, who works for Zeitgeist
School Tours, said that he knew of a lit-
tle known but impressive trench system
recreated on a sheep farm in Elham,
near Canterbury, Kent, and asked if
they would welcome school groups.
They agreed and with the help of
Frontline Living History, an education-
al re-enactment company, they will
bring groups to experience a day in the
trenches, involving replica kit, weapons
and even simulated gas attacks and fer-
rying the wounded. “It’s not going to beAll quiet on the Western Front... so visit Kent instead
the same of course, we can’t visit a large
war cemetery and the kids can’t buy
Belgian chocolate from Ypres — in the
worst case they’ll have a bar of
Cadbury’s — but we can give them this
fantastic open air history lesson.”
Toby Dingle, 20, who farms at
Roundhill Farm with his father Rich-
ard, 64, and mother Michele, 55, said
that he came up with the idea of build-
ing a trench system five years ago.
“Both sides of my family were in-
tensely involved in the First World War
and the Second World War and it’s our
own family way of showing our respects
and keeping the memory going more
than 100 years on,” he said. “I remem-
ber when I was at school and I went to
a museum and you only remember the
coach trip because you are with your
friends and having a laugh. There was a
lot of reading and you couldn’t touch
anything. I want the kids to go home
from ours and only be talking about the
trench and trying on the kit and not the
coach trip.”
The trenches were also a labour of
love for Andy Robertshaw, former
curator of the Royal Logistic CorpsMuseum, who was a consultant on
Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. He spent
£8,000 and 18 months creating the
trenches, which are based on the pre-
cise dimensions of a British trench near
Hawthorn Ridge, a fortified German
position on the Somme blown up by
British tunnellers in July 1916. The one-
acre network features firing bays, an aid
post, an engineer’s store, a dugout,
kitchen and even a light railway.
His grandfather, John Andrew
Robertshaw of the East Yorkshire Regi-
ment, survived the Battle of the Somme
and the Battle of Arras.
Mr Schaefer said that he was looking
forward to helping children engage
with the First World War again. “We tell
them exciting and sad stories and it’s
that mixture of tears and lots of laugh-
ter and I miss that a lot now the tours
have ended,” he said. “What we also aim
for is to show them what happens when
we fall apart as Europeans. I think we
changed the lives of these children and
that is what we want them all to think
about. To tell them it’s not just you and
we all need to get on with one another
whatever happens.”Will Humphries
Andy Robertshaw spent £8,000 and
18 months creating replica trenchesNews Coronavirus
You’ll benefit from being in the
and another 30 per cent for two days.
Mr Johnson has told departments that
he wants to see weekly figures detailing
the number of staff who have returned
to work.
Mr Bailey said that working from
home was damaging people’s prospects.
He said: “You miss out on your career
prospects, you miss out on the develop-
mental process. You miss out on friend-
ship as well. There’s new people you
won’t meet — friends, husbands, wives,
boyfriends, girlfriends — you’re not
going to meet that person. It’s no secret
that divorce rates have gone the wrong
way because people have been
crammed together. There’s an extra
layer of quality to a face-to-face ex-
change. We are physically and emo-
tionally built to be in groups.”
Matt Hancock, the health secretary,
suggested last week that people work-
ing from home were just as productive
as those in the office. “Matt was talking
about civil servants. But commercial
businesses have much more innovation
they need to work with,” Mr Bailey said.
“That means face-to-face conversa-
tions, that means the network has to be
more live.
“You can’t have press officers sending
out emails saying get back to work if
they’re not back to work as well.”
Mr Johnson yesterday faced criti-
cism for attending a meeting of back-
bench Tory MPs this week amid claims
that social distancing guidelines were
breached. Number 10 refused to say if
the prime minister broke social distanc-
ing rules after reports that 50 Tory MPs
had attended.
6 Millions of people could be offered
free trips to London under plans to help
the economy by getting Britons back
into the capital.
Giving away tickets for buses, trains
and the Tube is being considered to en-
tice the public to the city’s shops, res-
taurants and museums. Plans for a First
Ride Free scheme — the travel equiva-
lent to the Eat Out to Help Out initia-
tive — are being drawn up by Transport
for London (TfL), the Evening Standard
reported. A spokesman for TfL said:
“No final decisions have been made and
any option would need to be delivered
with government support, and agreed
with them as part of ongoing discus-
sions about our finances.”
Matt Hancock, My Week, page 40
Janice Turner, page 29Steven Swinford
Deputy Political Editor