Staff working from home - Find a freedom of information request

Please can I request the following:

1. The proportion of council workspace currently sitting unused due to staff working from home

i. Please provide this in both sq floor space

ii. Percentage of overall floor space

2.. How many rooms are empty due to council staff working from home?

3. How many buildings are empty due to council staff working from home?

4. The number of staff that are currently WFH?

5. How much money is currently being spent by the council heating/powering this empty space?

i. If you cannot provide a full figure, please provide an estimate

ii. Please break down into the different bills (such as electric, gas, water etc)

6. Please can you confirm if the council is considering selling any of this property due to its lack of use and staff WFH.

7. Please provide address details for any confirmed property being considered
 

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1. i. 6000sqm ii. 2.5% 2 office buildings are closed on Lincoln campus. Due to staff working part in the office and part at home, the required amount of office accommodation has been consolidated into other buildings.

2. 181 rooms (including ancillary areas) within 2 empty buildings. All other buildings have some element of utilisation and it would not be possible to evaluate each building individually.

3. 2 buildings totally empty

4. Data on staff WFH is not collected. Essential frontline highways and social work offices remain open and used by key staff around the county - where face-to-face contact with the public is particularly necessary. Otherwise, backroom staff are alternating between working from home and in the office particularly for essential council meetings and with council colleagues.

5. Electricity and water are not billed to LCC on an individual building basis and so we cannot provide a figure for the cost of utilities at those 2 empty buildings. Just under £1.5m was spent on electricity for LCC buildings in 2021/22. £415,000 was spent on gas. £236,000 was spent on water. LCC can say that the cost of gas for 2021/22 for the two empty buildings was £9,122.

6. The council is always reviewing use of its buildings on a regular basis and is looking at whether all our current buildings are needed although nothing has been decided at this stage.

7. Several properties are being considered but the method in which LCC staff will work in future is still under review and until that concludes it is impossible to determine our property requirement.