Prime Minister Andy Burnham's plan to split government business between London and Manchester has been branded a "fiasco" by government sources, who say he is struggling to find the time to leave the capital and head back to his beloved Manchester.
Mr Burnham unveiled the "No 10 North" initiative with great fanfare when he entered Downing Street in the summer, apparently without appreciating the volume of work running the country from London would involve.
Security sources have raised a separate concern. They say a lack of fully vetted political staff at No 10 North means that if a national emergency broke out while Mr Burnham was in Manchester, he would have to be flown to either London or Edinburgh.
How No 10 North was meant to work
Mr Burnham had planned to divide his time between Downing Street and GCHQ's Heron House building in Manchester, as part of a wider drive to decentralise government. GCHQ, the UK's signals intelligence agency, is best known for its headquarters in Cheltenham but also operates a site in Manchester.
The arrangement has instead left Chequers, the Prime Minister's official country residence in Buckinghamshire, standing unused, according to the sources.
A government source said: "No 10 North is a bit of a fiasco so far. Andy underestimated the scale of his Downing Street workload."
Aides frustrated by long meetings
Mr Burnham's aides are said to be frustrated by his habit of engaging in long conversations during meetings, which has derailed his daily schedule.
A source said: "We thought Keir was bad for spending too long talking to people, but Andy's even worse."
Security concerns over Manchester base
A security official said that even though the government was using the GCHQ building, it was not equipped for a full prime ministerial war room, and there were problems recruiting staff cleared to the highest security level to work from there.
"If the s*** hits the fan, he would have to be flown to London or Scotland," the official said.
'Second thoughts' about weekly trips
A Whitehall source said Mr Burnham was having second thoughts about returning to No 10 North each week, and had been taken aback by the relentless schedule in London.
"We're now having to schedule more meetings and events for later in the week in and around No 10," the source said. "It's making less and less sense for him to return to Manchester as regularly as he once thought possible."
A No 10 spokesman disputed the account, saying: "It is not true that meetings are running late, and there are not any security issues with No 10 North."
