Post Pandemic Places

This report by think tank Demos, commissioned by Legal & General, has found that areas with more remote working are likely to see higher levels of local spending, suggesting that hybrid working is key to the Government’s plans for regeneration after the pandemic.

Research found that 65% of the working population were forced to change their place of work during 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Of these, 79% want to continue to have some form of remote working in future. However, the findings – using a large, nationally-representative poll of 20,000 adults – indicate that a desire to work remotely is not necessarily the same as wanting to work from home all of the time.

The report calls on the Government to incentivise the establishment of more local offices and hybrid-working initiatives to give people the flexibility they want and also make progress on the ‘levelling up’ agenda, by spreading spending power across a wider geographic area. For example, it calls for the conversion of some local civic buildings to remote working spaces, which could be used by any civil servant in order to help spread spending power out across the country.