Don’t fight working from home – it could help level up Britain

The UK shouldn’t aim to reverse the changes we saw during the pandemic or ignore the evidence about the advantages of remote working, writes Andrew Phillips

It’s clear that hybrid working is going nowhere for a significant proportion of the workforce (Getty)

The debate around working from home shows no sign of slowing down. In a recent interview, the prime minister said “working from home doesn’t work”, citing the distractions of cheese and coffee, while some sections of the media regularly focus on the perceived disadvantages of homeworking.

Yet it’s clear that despite these negative attitudes, remote and hybrid working is here to stay. It is popular with workers earning both higher and lower incomes, who enjoy advantages including a better work-life balance. In the private sector, many employers have recognised that giving employees the flexibility to work remotely can improve their wellbeing, while maintaining or even improving productivity.

With almost all Covid restrictions lifted in England, it’s worth taking stock of where we are now. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that a binary debate between office-working and homeworking is misleading, because it’s increasingly clear that a hybrid option is going to be a common pattern going forward – a mixture of going into the office, and staying at home.