Civil servants are notorious sticklers for detail, but one glaring blooper somehow made it past Whitehall quality control.

A policy document produced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change appeared to impose a whopping 90 per cent reduction target on Department of Health carbon emissions between 2012 and 2018. Sure to cause a stir, one might have thought.

But the problem seemed to slip under the DH’s radar - understandable really, as climate change gets little attention from the public, media or politicians.

When a beady-eyed HSJ reporter queried the figures, DECC initially confirmed they were accurate, albeit fairly ambitious.

Meanwhile the DH said there had been a misprint and provided the reporter with a new figure - but one that would have allowed it to increase its emissions.

The NHS Sustainability Unit then stepped in, replacing the typo with a more realistic target. Good to see that “silo working”, while endemic among local services, has no place in central government.