The Home Office is under renewed scrutiny after it emerged nearly 200  officials have been sacked in the last three years for reasons including assault, corruption and cyber-crime.

The government department has responded, offering no-nonsense guidelines for its tens of thousands of employees to uphold the “highest professional standards” – both inside and out of the workplace.

It promises “appropriate action” will be meted out to those that “fall short” of what is expected of the civil service.

Since 2015, Home Office bosses have dismissed staff for a whole raft of serious misdemeanours with seven losing their jobs for bullying, harassment and discrimination offences.

Eighteen employees were fired for either fraud, corruption, theft or forgery.

Two were given their marching orders for viewing inappropriate websites and 25 people were let go for serious abuse or abuse of IT. 

Other offences included a “serious breach” of data security policy, unauthorised access to databases and records as well as violent, threatening or abusive behaviour and an assault on a colleague.

Four were sacked for offensive behaviour – which includes verbal abuse.

The 192 officials dismissed were among 709 disciplinary cases brought between 2015 and 2017, according to a Freedom of Information request.

A Home Office spokesman told Police Oracle: “The Home Office expects staff to uphold the highest standards of professional and personal conduct and integrity, both at work and outside of it. 

“When a member of staff is found to have fallen short of our high standards, it is right that they face appropriate action.”

In January, a review of how to deal with harassment and misconduct in the civil service revealed a “zero tolerance” to any form of bullying, harassment and discrimination while a survey of 98 government departments and organisations, published in November 2017, showed that the level of bullying and harassment in the office has remained more or less static since 2009. 

Some 11 per cent of staff said they had been subject to harassment in their civil service job in 2017, with 12 per cent saying they had suffered discrimination.