Leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing to bring staff back into office spaces after the Washington headquarters sat largely closed for more than a year. Agency managers have developed a plan to recall employees, but the plan has not been formally communicated to staff and the schedule for any return is not yet fixed.
The bureau's downtown Washington headquarters is now shared in part with the Office of Management and Budget, whose Director Russell Vought also exercises leadership of the CFPB. It remains unclear whether any new mandate would require employees to return to that specific building or whether staff working in locations outside the capital would be included in a recall.
More than a year earlier, the previous administration canceled the lease on the CFPB's headquarters and transferred control of the property to the General Services Administration. At the time, senior officials pushed for substantial reductions in the bureau's workforce and even called for the agency's elimination. Those plans have since been scaled back by top administration officials, according to reporting on internal deliberations.
Legal action has affected those personnel plans. A judge issued a provisional order prohibiting the planned elimination of the CFPB's workforce, after a lower court found that the administration had intended to dismantle the agency before the courts could rule on the legality of that action. That provisional order remains in place and continues to constrain how agency staffing decisions can proceed.
For now, the recall initiative exists as an internal plan awaiting announcement. Details that are still unresolved include the precise timing of returns, the physical locations that would be used for an office restart, and whether employees based outside Washington would be subject to any new mandate. The downtown headquarters' partial occupation by the Office of Management and Budget adds another layer of logistical uncertainty.
Summary
Agency leadership has drafted a return-to-office plan to bring CFPB staff back to physical workspaces after more than a year of closure at its Washington headquarters. The plan has not been announced, timing is uncertain, and questions remain about which employees and offices would be affected. The property that housed the headquarters was previously handed to the General Services Administration, and a judge's provisional order blocking prior workforce-elimination moves is still active.