Pensions Regulator Mandarins Spaff £20,000 on ‘Picnics’ and ‘Chair Yoga’ – Guido Fawkes

Pensions Regulator Mandarins Spaff £20,000 on ‘Picnics’ and ‘Chair Yoga’

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Civil servants at The Pensions Regulator seem to have found a novel definition of “work”: mixing office hours with staff network socials. According to an FOI request from the TaxPayers’ Alliance seen by Guido, this year they’ve bagged themselves a tidy £20,000 budget for six internal staff networks: ‘LGBT+’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Disability’, ‘Women’, ‘Minority Ethnic’, and ‘Family’. Each chair even gets 10% of their working hours ringfenced just for running these networks. Some more notable events to mark ‘National Walking Month’ this April include:

• ‘The Camino Connection’
• ‘Communities Picnic’
• ‘Wellbeing Walkshop’
• ‘Chair Yoga’

For a budget of £20,000, you could:

• Provide 100 pensioners under-79 the winter fuel allowance.
• Fill 277 potholes.
• Fund 666 GP appointments.

Last year the quango’s budget for staff networks was £14,400, meaning the budget has increased by 38% this year. The taxpayer may have a view on which should be prioritised. UK DOGE recommends costs are cut here…