“Open floors led to “challenged concentration levels”, “a ‘battery hen’ impact”, difficulties for teamwork, and made it more difficult to recruit staff, it warned.
They said they wanted single offices for all staff with management roles, and cellular enclosed office space for 152 legal staff. A detailed business case said management would need individual offices to discuss “highly confidential and sensitive matters” such as human resources, legal issues, FOI requests, and handling media queries.
“Mentoring is best achieved where senior or more experienced and junior legal officers work in a close niche setting, which neither disturbs other officers nor leaves the more junior, or less experienced legal officer ‘exposed’ or embarrassed,” it added. “A key tension is the need to minimise the disruption that can be caused by legal officers heading to and returning from court, consultations, client meetings and similar with oftentimes large volumes of papers,” said the business case.