SFO Response to COVID-19: 16 March to 8 May 2020 (435 kB)

This report is the first stage of looking at how the organisations we inspect have responded during the global COVID-19 pandemic. It looks at the SFO’s response during the period of lockdown from 16 March to 8 May.

Virtually all SFO staff work from its office in London, and its IT architecture was not designed to support large numbers of staff working from home. Despite this, the SFO successfully moved to a position where the vast majority of staff were working from home, and the business has continued to operate.

This inspection has been conducted at speed to allow for the publication of the report as close to the period of lockdown as possible. We followed the usual phases of inspection but truncated the timescales of some aspects. Because of COVID-19, our on-site visits took place virtually.

We plan to carry out a more extensive inspection, likely in 2021, which will examine the recovery phase in greater detail and also look more closely at stakeholder relationships and their impacts, both at the initial stages and as recovery plans are developed.