Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 27 October 2021 to Question 61147 on Treasury: Staff, what information he (a) has collected, (b) is collecting and (c) plans to collect in order to (i) establish a baseline against which the implementation of smarter working by 2022 may be measured, (ii) track the progress of that implementation and (iii) evaluate the effectiveness of that implementation.

HMT started work to adopt smarter working practices pre-pandemic, and to establish a baseline, underwent an initial smarter working assessment by the Government Property Agency (GPA) in February 2020. Following this assessment which assessed HMT as a ‘new’ adopter of smarter working practices, work to adopt new ways of working has continued, adapting leadership, culture, technology, workplace and process to enable the adoption of smarter working practices. A further smarter working assessment by the GPA to measure progress is planned to take place in February 2022. The current project to embed new ways of working scheduled to complete in at the end of Q1 in FY21/22 with re-assessment planned at the end of the programme.