In a letter to staff posted on the FCA’s intranet and seen by The Standard, Georgina Philippou, FCA’s chief operating officer, said she was horrified at the instances of bad behaviour towards the FCA’s £60 million building and colleagues.

Ms Philippou said she was “ashamed” of the behaviour exhibited by a small proportion of FCA staff as she highlighted various misdemeanours, including “leaving cutlery and crockery in the kitchen areas, overflowing bins, stealing plants and charging cables from desks, catering and security teams being subject to verbal abuse, colleagues defecating on the floor in toilet cubicles on a particular floor, urinating on the floor in the men’s toilets and leaving alcohol bottles in sanitary bins”.

The FCA’s offices house almost 4,000 employees alongside numerous outsourced cleaning, security and catering staff.

An FCA spokeswoman told The Standard: “We have a duty as an employer to highlight this sort of behaviour and our senior management are clear it is simply unacceptable. Judging from the feedback we have received on the article, our staff agree.”