Hundreds of councils let staff 'work from the beach' - Labour found to be biggest soft-touches

The Noth London council granted as many as 286 requests over the last three years.

However, the data from the Freedom of Information requests found as many as 1,221 requests were given the green light in just three years.

It also found that a further 137 requests were approved but councils did not supply a yearly breakdown.

Of all 383 councils approached in the UK, only 320 replied to the probe.

Shockingly, two other London councils approved over 200 requests to work abroad - Metron and Islington - meaning the top three allowers of ‘work from the beach’ are all Labour councils.

The former, approved 251 requests while Islington approved 237.

Multiple councils even approved their staff to work abroad for weeks and in some cases months.

Croydon Council allowed one employee to work from abroad for a whopping 842 days, while one council staff member from WIgan was allowed to work from France for two years.

Some councils even went as far as to allow staff to work from abroad permanently.

As many as 70 councils also allowed those on six-figure salaries to log on from overseas.

​The TaxPayers’ alliance discovered through the data that there had been a ten-fold increase in the number of council staff being allowed to work from abroad.

Only 73 approvals were made in 2020/21 when Covid was at its height, but this reportedly jumped to more than 700 last year.

The latest data comes after bank workers were given an ultimatum where they risk losing their work bonus should they not come into office.

Workers at Citi Bank were told that staff who do not come to office at least three days a week could have their bonuses scrapped.

Citi Bank warned it has “firm expectations for office attendance” with staff told they will be monitored.

Other banks such as Lloyds have implemented the monitoring of swiping access cards for its 40,000-strong work force.