The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Steve Barclay, has tasked departments across government with ensuring their offices can return quickly to full occupancy following the lifting of work from home restrictions in England.

The Civil Service will lead the way in a return to office working, with Ministers working with their Permanent Secretaries and departments to put in place measures to monitor office use and get people back to normal, pre-pandemic arrangements, with clear Ministerial expectations put in place.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said:

Now we are learning to live with COVID and have lifted Plan B measures, we need to move away from a reliance on video meetings and get back to the benefits of face-to-face, collaborative working.

I’m grateful to the Civil Service for managing the challenges of the last two years. It is important that we now see the maximum use of our office space being made from next week, as we build a strong recovery after the disruption of the pandemic.

The Civil Service has played a leading role in helping the country tackle the pandemic, with many front-line workers and office staff remaining in their places of work throughout the pandemic and many more working from home.

Following the removal of Plan B measures, it is however vital that more staff return to the office so they can once again benefit from collaborative working in their public service delivery – this is particularly important for the learning and development of new members of staff, who have joined the Civil Service during the pandemic.

The Minister’s call for government departments to enable a return to full capacity has been reiterated by the Cabinet Office’s Permanent Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the Civil Service, Alex Chisholm, who has written to leaders across Whitehall asking them to support a significant and swift return of staff to the workplace.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will also raise the issue at Cabinet next week, where he is expected to urge Ministers to make sure their offices are working at full capacity at the earliest opportunity.

It is expected that Civil Servants and other office workers returning to the office will bring economic benefits for businesses across the country, with sandwich shops and the hospitality sector due to see a dramatic increase in footfall.

To allow the transition back to office working, measures have been put in place in government buildings to reassure staff. These include increased ventilation and improved cleaning routines. Department leaders will also ensure all safety guidance is followed at all times.

There is no government requirement or recommendation for employers to limit capacity in the workplace.

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid present in the cannabis plant (Cannabis sativa L) along with many other cannabinoids that may either exhibit psychoactive or non-psychoactive properties.

CBD plant extract or plant isolates have gained salience as an ingredient in food supplements and in some cosmetic products, and there has been a proliferation of such products, available online and on the high street.

As an isolated substance, CBD is not a controlled drug. However, the process of extracting or isolating CBD from the cannabis plant may co-extract the other cannabinoids and products.

CBD edible products are now regulated as novel foods. They must also be compositionally safe and correctly labelled. Wide variation in compliance with CBD label claims has been recorded and the presence of controlled cannabinoids is a known risk.

In addition, the ‘controlled drug’ content ‘threshold’ of one milligram in a product or preparation referred to in the Home Office Drug Licensing Factsheet – Cannabis, CBD and other cannabinoids was presenting difficulties in interpretation and analysis.

To address these issues, the Government Chemist has been undertaking a number of CBD-related projects:

When the ministerial commission asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to specify which controlled cannabinoids should be controlled and set an unavoidable trace level for each of these within consumer CBD products, the Government Chemist was able to feed his findings into the ACMD’s consumer cannabidiol (CBD) products: call for evidence.

ACMD has now published its advice on consumer cannabidiol (CBD) products making several recommendations. Read the report and accompanying letters:

The Government Chemist was pleased to note the citation to his work in the letter from the ACMD Chair to Kit Malthouse MP, Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Justice for “providing the main evidence for the practical capacity for the analytics industry to test” for such products.

The Government Chemist will continue to work with UK regulators and other stakeholders to help take the ACMD’s recommendations forward.

For more information about the work mentioned in this page or the work the Government Chemist does contact: