Stories occasionally pop up about pest problems in creaking civil service HQ buildings in London. Marsham Street’s Defra/Home Office building had a particularly tough case of bed bugs last year…
A Freedom of Information request fired out by Guido has confirmed that over at the DWP’s headquarters on Caxton Street the pest controllers have been called out a whopping 24 times in 12 months. There is a 50/50 split between preventative and reactive callouts. Civil servants must know the pest controllers by name – they show up every two weeks…
The DWP is refusing to release the cost of pest control operations “to protect the ability of a public authority like DWP to obtain goods or services on the best possible commercial terms and to protect the legitimate commercial interests of its suppliers.” Is that in case someone offered to do it for less?
Burnham confirms he spoke to Trump last night about drilling in the North Sea:
“I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here. There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president…”