When I pass the Slough Borough Council’s glass-walled meeting room, the lights are on, but no one is home.
The Mayor’s Parlour, an empty space next to a similarly empty waiting area with vacant sofas and empty executive chairs, tells the same tale when I peek inside.
A soundproof series of egg-shaped pods with fashionable hanging lights is located around the corner in the office’s “breakout zone,” where staff members are meant to be tapping away on laptops. However, these pods are absolutely empty.
The nearby offices and conference rooms are also completely empty.
A locked canteen and several acres of fresh air are visible in the five-story atrium I can only see via a security door, but there are no other people other than a lonely-looking receptionist.
With the exception of the continual hum of the air conditioner, this enormous edifice is eerily quiet. The atmosphere could be compared to Mary Celeste.
But this is not some deserted set from a movie. Instead, it’s the scene I saw at the main headquarters of a local authority that employs around 800 people on Wednesday at precisely 10 a.m.
We are in Observatory House, an office building that Slough’s Labour-controlled council shockingly paid £39 million for in 2018 to replace its town hall (four years previously, it had changed hands for just £10 million).
The building was later given a dramatic Silicon Valley makeover, costing upwards of £1 million, including the installation of electronic waste paper baskets, exposed brickwork, stylish wood paneling, and suspended mood lighting.
Additional hundreds of thousands of tax dollars were spent on “ergonomic” desks, chairs, and a “tranquil” chill-out space with Astroturf flooring and designer rocking chairs (the council’s old office furniture was donated to a charity or disposed of in landfill).
They even chose to spend £28,000 on pot plants and employed contractors to water them for an estimated £10,000 a year as part of a “biophilic” design to enhance “mental health, wellbeing, and workplace productivity.” In 2019, employees moved in.
Covid then arrived. The personnel at Observatory House was instructed to work from the comfort of their homes for the duration of the day, similar to how most offices operated.
But what started out as a transient arrangement gradually turned into a sort of entitlement that was almost permanent.
Slough Borough Council still let its employees to work from wherever they like, even two years after the initial lockdown was lifted and four months after England’s final pandemic restriction was released.
There are also no preparations to send them back to the workplace.
In fact, a senior executive was recently given permission to go to Wales on the condition that she would never again have to enter the office through the dark door.
So it is that this six-story, 110,000 square foot structure, which cost the people of Slough at least £40 million, or £50,000 for each and every council employee, is today mostly empty, with its top floor empty and several empty conference rooms filled with trash and cardboard boxes.
Just 130 employees showed up to work between 8.30 and 9.30am on what should have been a busy workday when the Mail arrived (of which some had signed in as visitors), and tennis court-sized clusters of unoccupied desks were visible everywhere.
The sole floor with more than a few employees turned out to have been sub-let to another organization, and barely one in four of the rooms on the second and third levels appeared to be occupied.
A number of “gender neutral” restrooms had been unusable for a month (perhaps because maintenance personnel or the persons in charge of them aren’t present to see that they are fixed), and no one was to be seen in the location that was intended to house the council’s primary call center.
If Slough were a well-oiled machine, one could respond, “So what?” However, the device is malfunctioning.
Because the town’s 165,000 citizens are being gravely neglected as executives peddle their Pelotons.
According to the council’s own website, taxpayers should plan on waiting on hold for at least 45 minutes if they want to speak to a live person in their organization.
The website also contains alarming notices about “bin collection delays” brought on by “staff shortages.”
But that is merely the top of the iceberg. One of the few Tory opposition council members,
Wayne Strutton, has the sober assessment that “it’s a catastrophe.”
“Residents are failing on every level, and it’s all due to poor administration and utter lack of responsibility,” said one resident.
“Nobody is effectively managing things, therefore council house repairs aren’t happening.”
A property in my area has 25 roof tiles missing after being blown off during Storm Eunice in February.
It has not been fixed. Unremoved trees that fell during the same storm can still be seen.
“Managers are merely not performing their duties,” I’ve been attempting to assist a resident who has been dealing with dampness in their home due to leaking pipes for months.
The phone may automatically hang up after two hours for vulnerable persons who call to report issues with their houses. Simply put, the IT at the call center is inadequate for remote work.
A few directors alternate weeks to arrive at the studio. Housing officers that I am aware of have been refusing to go to people’s houses.
Independent council member Madhuri Bedi concurs. I’ve needed to ask a council employee a question recently on a number of occasions, but I never received an answer.
Nothing ever seems to get finished. Weeds are abundant on pavement. The grass is uncut. It’s difficult to communicate with the locals. A state is a group of bins.
“The fundamental things that every council should be doing for residents just aren’t occurring,”
Those unfortunate residents, whose annual council tax payments range from £1,233 to $3,700, may be tempted to leave.
However, municipal governments across, from every political perspective, are experiencing the same terrible circumstances as Slough.
As a result, a number of glittering office buildings that were constructed at a cost of tens of millions of dollars are now sitting almost entirely empty.
Consider Cambridgeshire, which is run by a partnership of the Liberal Democrats and Labour.
In April, it was revealed that the company’s recently constructed £18 million headquarters had been left essentially empty due to personnel being told to stay at home months after Covid rules were eliminated.