TWO of the city’s biggest employers have confirmed they currently have no plans to bring staff back full time.

Employees were permitted to return to the office for the first time since lockdown began earlier this month.

Lockdown rules dictated that all who could work from home should do so, but government rules changed in the summer and now state it is up to employers to decide if they needed to have their staff all in one place in order to properly run their business.

A spokesman for NPower said there had been some employees returning to office working.

"We already have teams back in our Worcester office – but because we are operating a Covid Secure site, the numbers are smaller than usual," the spokesman said.

"Given we will be at our full capacity for safety reasons, all our other Worcester-based employees are currently working from home.

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"We don’t anticipate any change to these arrangements whilst the government guidance remains as it is."

Meanwhile Nick Grey, owner of Gtech, talked of their flexible approach.

Mr Grey said: "We have no plans to change our working arrangements.

"Everyone can work from home if they want to or come in to the office if they prefer.

"At present around 10 per cent of the workforce come in to the office as opposed to two or three per cent at the height of lockdown."

With schools set to reopen next month the government had hoped employers would follow and get staff back to offices where safe to do so.

But economic experts say a shift to more home working shift patterns, which had even started before the pandemic, is now likely to become more permanent.