Many of the Department for Transport's own staff at its new base in Leeds were forced to work remotely after Storm Franklin brought West Yorkshire's public transport system to a grinding halt.
Around 160 people now work at the department's office in Wellington Place on the edge of the city centre, which was set up as part of efforts to make the Civil Service less London-centric.
And high speed rail Minister Andrew Stephenson, who is working from the office all this week, said the gale-force winds and rain from this morning's storm meant a number were unable to make it into work.
Get the latest on flooding in Leeds here
Many local rail services were suspended today and operator Northern advised people not travel by train, while Leeds station itself also saw some flooding.
Mr Stephenson, a Conservative Lancashire MP, told The Northern Agenda political newsletter: "There were a number of people who actually just joined on remote calls because they were relying on public transport. They were all going to come in this morning and they haven't been able to.
"That's the challenge on a day like today, obviously, I'm hoping to see a lot of them tomorrow, the day after, as we start to get the network's back operating again. And that's one of the benefits of me being here all week. Those who unfortunately haven't made it in today, I shall be able to see sooner or later."
As part of the Places for Growth scheme designed to move 22,000 civil servants out of London by 2030, some 650 Department for Transport officials will be spread between offices in Leeds and Birmingham.
Mr Stephenson said: "There are some people here working on Northern transport, but the member of staff who leads on our preparations for COP26 as a department was based in the Leeds office.
"So you've got people from senior civil servants to new starters from apprentices and recent graduates all the way through to senior civil servants just choosing to relocate to Leeds. So it's fascinating.
"And a diverse range of backgrounds where people come from and where they're currently located, if they've move back to the area or whether they've always been here or whether they came to university and had a great experience. So it's really interesting the stories that I'm hearing."
He added: "They're not commuting from London. The majority will live in Leeds, but I've met people today who live in Harrogate, Skipton, Colne, so I've got one from my own patch, so a variety of places.
"And of course, that means on days like today when we're dealing with the aftermath of a storm, you've got people who had challenges of rail lines closed this morning, bus services disrupted and everything else.
"But the role that we're recruiting here are really everything from scientists to engineers, policymakers, human resources, finance, really diverse roles. And we want this to be in the same way as the Treasury have set up their hub in Darlington with a whole range of different grades of civil servants, people working in different policy areas.
"We want the Leeds DfT office to be the same, doing the full breadth of everything the DfT is about, not just focused on Northern transport, focused on everything."
He said the DfT had previously been 'London-centric' and "the desire now is to ensure that we stop being a London-centric organisation, we get a real diversity of talent with people in from across the UK".
He added: "I'm delighted to see how many people have actively decided to start working here, many coming from, you know, the private sector, other government departments, people who've never worked for the DFT before, who are joining us here.
"Some have come from local councils, but also some people who actually have moved to London in the past to work and found the opportunity to move back to Leeds to work in this office too much to resist and therefore have come back and again, the people I've spoken to, I've met those who had great experiences at Leeds University and therefore wanted to come back to Leeds but just couldn't get the job they wanted before.
"I've met with people who were born and bred in the area who moved to London, and then now with a pandemic thought, 'great, I don't want to move back to London, I want to stay living up here' and also I've met people who have never worked in the Civil Service before because that's not been an option because the jobs and the availability haven't been here. And now, with us being here they've seen that as an opportunity.
"But similarly within this hub there are 14 government departments based here, which means that people can not just see career progression within the DfT but they can see other government departments which they might want to work for and just walking around this building today I've met with people from Homes England, people from the Department for Education, people from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
"So you're getting a real hub here of government activity. And that should mean that in addition to me being here, obviously this week as a DfT Minister, you also see other Ministers working from this building and this getting a real kind of vibrant feel to it."
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