Mandarins shell out £130k for Starmer army’s offices

With a change of government, you might have thought 4 July would see a lot of new brooms in Whitehall. Yet, for some mandarins, the dissolution of the last parliament seems to have been the cue to get all the paint brushes and toolkits out. Since the end of May, more than £130,000 was spent by eleven departments across Whitehall as officials rushed to refurbish their new ministers’ offices.

A series of written questions by new boy Ashley Fox show that two high-spending departments seemed to welcome Labour’s arrival with particular gusto. The Department of Energy Security greeted Ed Miliband’s return by blowing more than £42,000 – excluding VAT – on a refurbishment including nearly £30,000 worth of new furniture and fittings. In a statement, officials defended this largesse by claiming that ‘the number of Ministers in DESNZ increased by one following the general election, the result of which was a higher than usual spend to facilitate an additional office.