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Why are HMRC spending £11m on office furniture?

https://x.com/lnallalingham/status/2003029277759979530

Because it has 60,000 staff and £160 a chair is good value?

Not just chairs but desks too. As the tweet makes clear.

It may well be about saving money.

If you have staff sitting at a desk x hours a day, then you have an obligation to provide furniture that protects the staff against bad back, RSI etc.

Plenty of companies have been sued and had to make large settlements for this.

One reason for the popularity of the Herman Miller Aeron chairs in offices, was that they provided a bulletproof protection against such claims - “We spent over a thousand per person on buying the most ergonomic chairs on the planet”. I was told, by an HR person, that buying them meant that the company insurance policy against such things was a fraction of what it otherwise would be.

So you get expensive chairs, monitor arms (easy adjustment) and the latest - the powered, adjustable height desks.

Yes, a typical office worker (public or private sector) spends a large portion of their life in their chair. Having a comfortable one is important and a good use of £££. It's no different to making sure our soldiers have proper boots.

Not only that if you don’t give one that is fit for purpose you could end up on the wrong side of a legal claim for a ‘bad back’

Why are HMRC spending £11m on office furniture?

https://x.com/lnallalingham/status/2003029277759979530

Why do posters who rely on right wing news never spend 20 seconds checking their facts before getting angry?

A quick google of "did hmrc spend 11m furniture?" leads to:

No, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) did not spend £11 million on furniture. Recent news reports indicate that HMRC spent over £1 million on office chairs and other furniture over a three-year period.
Specifically, figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request in 2024 revealed the following spending:
Over £1 million on office chairs
£59,000 on desks
£16,000 on storage units
The spending, which included an £852,000 deal with the seat firm Posturite starting in October 2023, has drawn criticism from groups like the TaxPayers' Alliance, particularly as the purchases were made despite staff only being required to be in the office for a portion of the week.
Other reports referencing £11 million relate to different government initiatives, such as funding for town and city centre recovery schemes or homelessness prevention programmes, not HMRC furniture.

Link to contract. Published last week, value £10.9m to a single supplier.

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/c2ebc7d5-e787-4fd4-95ec-133629f52f74

Single supplier is to be expected. Uniform styling in office furniture is the norm, especially with the use of open plan design. Also making sure that modular design stuff actually fits together with wiring ducts, etc. - think open plan cubicles. And key systems. And single point to go to for assembly and installation.

So not an objection per se.

That contact will include the equipment for HMRC's new Newcastle Office which is 9000 workers.

And 9000 Aeron chairs at full retail (yes cheaper, crappier chairs are available and will be inflicted on HMRC's staff) would cost £12 million at retail prices.

I guess one new large office could take a fair bit of the budget, although one might argue why exactly HMRC needs so many people, nearly 70k in total, given that most of us now do everything tax-related ourselves online.

How many should it take, though?

70k HMRC staff is 1 per a thousand people in the country. So that's about 2 staff-hours per head of population per year. And whilst most of us don't take up very much time, it doesn't seem crazy that the minority do.

Trouble with both "70000 staff" and "£11mn furniture contract" is that they lie in the "bike shed" range of Parkinson's Law of Meetings. Small enough that we think we understand them (even if we don't really) and big enough (though they aren't really) that we think it's worth having an opinion on them.

Why are HMRC spending £11m on office furniture?

https://x.com/lnallalingham/status/2003029277759979530

Er, HMRC have loads of offices and will sometimes need new furniture. You're not expecting people to work on the floor are you?

What a weird thing to complain about.

It’s not that some of them need new furniture, it’s that they’re spending £11m on one order for furniture. Surely they’re not buying a desk and chair for their whole staff all at the same time?

I wonder if there is some major merging of offices on new sites going on, after the merger.

Office furniture covers more than that. Stationery cupboards, filing cabinets, meeting room kit, coffee area, etc. etc. A better grade of security for the locks for HMRC. And delivery and assembly.

Half the time the right complain about the shite facilities* in the public sector, half the time they complain when the facilities are upgraded to basic commercial standard, ie all looking reasonably neat and professional and to modern H&S standards esp for screen work.

And the rest of the time (from their home computers) they demand civil servants all work in the office 5 days a week.

Look at the cost of office fit-outs in large private sector businesses. Facilities management procurement is largely the same process regardless of the buying organisation. I suspect the HMRC approach is rather more cheapskate than many of those.

£11 million doesn't seem expensive to me for 70,000 employees and £5 billion operating costs. I think people who haven't worked in large organisations don't have an understanding of how much money swills around.

Why are HMRC spending £11m on office furniture?

https://x.com/lnallalingham/status/2003029277759979530

Er, HMRC have loads of offices and will sometimes need new furniture. You're not expecting people to work on the floor are you?

What a weird thing to complain about.

It’s not that some of them need new furniture, it’s that they’re spending £11m on one order for furniture. Surely they’re not buying a desk and chair for their whole staff all at the same time?

There's a tweet in reply that says it's a framework contract. There isn't literally an order for £11m worth of furniture to be delivered in one go, but there's been a tender for a supplier so that all orders for new furniture for the next period of time are under that contract, up to a limit of £11m.

This way the central bureaucracy controls the contract for furniture, but the local offices are able to order what they need as and when they need it.

Obviously, if you were able to dig into the detail it's possible that it's terrible value, but the actual sessions of the contract doesn't show that at all.

The incentive would appear to be for the contractor to go up to the upper limit. There is no competitive tender process (except at the very beginning) so no need to offer value, or quality. Indeed, the more the furniture needs to be replaced, the more the chosen supplier earns. Nor does there appear to be any incentive for HMRC civil servants to make their furniture go a bit further or seek the best value option.

Nah, if you had worked to a framework deal like this you’d know there’s all sorts of benchmarking in there. They are terrible ideas for more complex procurement, but for consumables they work well. They won’t deliver the cheapest unit price but they do deliver something manageable for a large organisation, that avoids having to have purchasing and contract managers everywhere.

To be honest, the main problem with a standard government contract is when the government side leaves in onerous provisions and is not flexible enough. E.g. Unlimited liability that the supplier has to price for based on securing insurance, even if it gets no guaranteed work, when a sensible cap might have been negotiated because the risk is low.

Why are HMRC spending £11m on office furniture?

https://x.com/lnallalingham/status/2003029277759979530

Er, HMRC have loads of offices and will sometimes need new furniture. You're not expecting people to work on the floor are you?

What a weird thing to complain about.

It’s not that some of them need new furniture, it’s that they’re spending £11m on one order for furniture. Surely they’re not buying a desk and chair for their whole staff all at the same time?

I wonder if there is some major merging of offices on new sites going on, after the merger.

Office furniture covers more than that. Stationery cupboards, filing cabinets, meeting room kit, coffee area, etc. etc. A better grade of security for the locks for HMRC. And delivery and assembly.

Half the time the right complain about the shite facilities* in the public sector, half the time they complain when the facilities are upgraded to basic commercial standard, ie all looking reasonably neat and professional and to modern H&S standards esp for screen work.

And the rest of the time (from their home computers) they demand civil servants all work in the office 5 days a week.

Look at the cost of office fit-outs in large private sector businesses. Facilities management procurement is largely the same process regardless of the buying organisation. I suspect the HMRC approach is rather more cheapskate than many of those.

£11 million doesn't seem expensive to me for 70,000 employees and £5 billion operating costs. I think people who haven't worked in large organisations don't have an understanding of how much money swills around.

That or PB’s “how hard can it be” contingent have discovered another string to their already impressive multi-talented bow: facilities procurement expertise.

No need to be snide.

Bear in mind, also, the new HMRC building in Newcastle which will accommodate 6,000 people. Also replacing old stock.

I sourced new furniture when we refurbished our offices. A business with 100 staff. It wasn’t cheap and it needed to meet ergonomic requirements. I can easily see this spend being reasonable. It didn’t just include chairs for people but tables, equipment for pods and meeting rooms too.

I don’t think this unreasonable. Do people expect them to stand all day.