Covid-19 to have a permanent downward effect on commuting patterns with more partial working from home?

WelshBluebird said:

Why?



Couldn't you say the same about being in the office for some people?

1. Potentially cheaper for the business as they don't have to pay for such large office space in prime locations
2. Potentially cheaper for staff as they don't have to spent thousands commuting to or renting in high demand areas
3. Gives the business access to a larger talent pool (I.e. if I am a business based on London, with remote working I can hire someone based in Manchester without having to open a Manchester office or expecting them to commute all of that time, or it means I can actually hire people who will only do remote work - that last one is pretty common in the Tech industry).
4. Gives staff wider access to employers (Ie.e. if I am based in Bristol but working remotely, I can just as easily work for a company based in London as I could one based in Bristol)
5. Why not give people the option? I'll turn it back on you - what is the point of forcing people to go into an office when the same work can be done remotely?

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I never said that people shouldn't have the option but I said it shouldn't be an expectation. I don't want to be expected to do WFH as it isn't compatible with my personality or lifestyle. If it was optional to spend as many hours in the office as you wish and as many hours WFH as you wish, it would be less of an issue but the way it appears to be thrown about is that everyone is going to be expected to do WFH.

Regarding the point on commuting, that is true but it will have a knock on effect on the economy if people aren't going out to work. Businesses have less customers, train companies get less revenue (thus less investment).

On the 4th point about staff having wider access to employers, couldn't that make it harder for some to find employment? If a company can just get anyone from anywhere in the country, it may be harder to find a job in your own area that suits.

I also feel that it will promote people being antisocial. I got told when I was a teenager that you never meet anyone if you stay in the house all day and it's true - if people don't leave their house much due to WFH, how will they meet others and socialise? Humans are social creatures at the end of the day.

Scotrail12 said:

I never said that people shouldn't have the option but I said it shouldn't be an expectation. I don't want to be expected to do WFH as it isn't compatible with my personality or lifestyle. If it was optional to spend as many hours in the office as you wish and as many hours WFH as you wish, it would be less of an issue but the way it appears to be thrown about is that everyone is going to be expected to do WFH.

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That's a fair point. And I think a lot of employers have this year tended to conflate the terms 'flexible working' and 'home working' - they are not the same, and insisting that staff have to work at home is just as inflexible as insisting that they have to work in an office.

Scotrail12 said:

I never said that people shouldn't have the option but I said it shouldn't be an expectation. I don't want to be expected to do WFH as it isn't compatible with my personality or lifestyle. If it was optional to spend as many hours in the office as you wish and as many hours WFH as you wish, it would be less of an issue but the way it appears to be thrown about is that everyone is going to be expected to do WFH.

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Maybe this is a difference in the industry I work in? Certainly nobody I know in the industry is talking about forcing 100% remote working. Most are talking about things like giving staff the choice, or downsizing offices to cater for somewhere between 50% and 75% their staff numbers with staff alternating who is in vs who is remote on a specific day (with priority given for those who need to be in the office, who would prefer to be in the office or who just don't have a good spot at home to work from), or just being more open to taking on more remote staff.

Also worth saying there is a reason I'm using the phrase remote working rather than WFH - again maybe this is because of the industry I am in but I've had colleagues who have worked for a few days whilst abroad (e.g. going on holiday for a month and working a couple of days of that) or to the extreme who have done the whole digital nomad thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_nomad). It doesn't have to be from your home.

Scotrail12 said:

Regarding the point on commuting, that is true but it will have a knock on effect on the economy if people aren't going out to work. Businesses have less customers, train companies get less revenue (thus less investment).

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The rail / transport question is a real one that does need to be looked at.

There have been suggestions that a move to more remote working could lead people to live further away from their employer (e.g. just because my emplioyer is in London, doesn't mean I have to be near there so I could move to somewhere cheaper / less busy / that offers a better quality of life) etc but still keep my job) and the times they are needed in the office would result in a higher ticket price than ticket prices for shorter journeys that people would commute on right now (e.g. an annual season ticket from RDG to PAD is almost £5k, if you went down to being in the office one day a fortnight - which is an extreme example - someone could move to say Bristol or hell even somewhere like Dawlish and pay about the same to the railway each year but obviously travelling a lot less often).

In terms of businesses like coffee shops or cafes - all it means is those places would have to be where people live rather than near offices. Certainly me working from home this year has meant I've popped to local places near me during my lunch break that would normally be closed by the time I got home from work!

Scotrail12 said:

On the 4th point about staff having wider access to employers, couldn't that make it harder for some to find employment? If a company can just get anyone from anywhere in the country, it may be harder to find a job in your own area that suits.

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Someone looking for a job having access to more employers probably balances that out though. You are only really at a disadvantage if the job you want is willing to accept part of fully remote but you aren't willing to accept that - in which case is that an employer you'd want to work for anyway?

Scotrail12 said:

I also feel that it will promote people being antisocial. I got told when I was a teenager that you never meet anyone if you stay in the house all day and it's true - if people don't leave their house much due to WFH, how will they meet others and socialise? Humans are social creatures at the end of the day.

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Most of my friends are not people I met at work. They are people I've met at gigs, at football, in pubs etc. Granted those things are out of the question right now, but if you look forward to what remote working would be in a post covid world - it isn't "staying in the house all day" - the last few months of WFH have only been that because of the fact most leisure has been closed to the public. And even during work hours - as I said earlier you have cafes or coffee shops around the place, even Brewdog offer people the ability to pay for a spot at one of their Bars which gives free access to wifi, free coffee all day and a free pint of beer at the end of the day.

The social side really depends on the employer and the people you work with. Somewhere like a large manufacturing plant or a university might have a canteen, social club, maybe sports teams or works outings where you can mix with people from across the organisation. If you work in a team of 10 on a business park where everyone jumps in their cars at 1700, then the opportunities for socialising are more limited.

WelshBluebird said:

And even during work hours - as I said earlier you have cafes or coffee shops around the place, even Brewdog offer people the ability to pay for a spot at one of their Bars which gives free access to wifi, free coffee all day and a free pint of beer at the end of the day.

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Not sure how 'free' those things are

telstarbox said:

The social side really depends on the employer and the people you work with. Somewhere like a large manufacturing plant or a university might have a canteen, social club, maybe sports teams or works outings where you can mix with people from across the organisation. If you work in a team of 10 on a business park where everyone jumps in their cars at 1700, then the opportunities for socialising are more limited.


Not sure how 'free' those things are

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They are "free" in that you pay £70 a month to get a spot (many co-working spaces charge more than that just for the spot), you get unlimited (probably to a point!) coffee and then a pint each day (which itself would cost you more than the £70 a month if you had one each working day). So yeah not free - but I'd still say pretty good value considering. Not for me due to how many meetings / calls I have to be on, but will certainly suit some people!

WelshBluebird said:

Even in those situations, at least in my line of work, the last few months have shown that it would be better for everybody to be on Teams on their own rather than having two groups of people in separate locations. The issue you have with what you describe is basically the same as what Jimini has described for lone people with everyone else in a meeting room - you get the people in the room talking amongst each other not being audible to whoever is on the call - except in your scenario you just get two groups of people doing that!

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OK it sounds like you haven't experienced the kind of meetings I'm thinking of so as an example.

Team working on project for client: We expect to deliver the project by Friday
Client: We do want to make one change which is ...... Will it still be delivered by Friday incorporating that change?
Team working on project for client: Just give us a couple of minutes. (Microphone muted and video turned off while the team discusses among itself whether delivering the project is on Friday is still achievable without impacting other client's projects. Client can not hear these discussions as it would breach commercial agreements with other clients.)
(Microphone unmuted and video turned back on) Yes we can deliver by Friday but it will now be last thing on Friday, we were originally hoping it would be by lunchtime on Friday.

If you have a client who has clear requirements and never changes their minds, then that may not be required but 95% of the time that isn't the case.

WelshBluebird said:

1. Potentially cheaper for the business as they don't have to pay for such large office space in prime locations

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WelshBluebird said:

1. Gives the business access to a larger talent pool (I.e. if I am a business based on London, with remote working I can hire someone based in Manchester without having to open a Manchester office or expecting them to commute all of that time, or it means I can actually hire people who will only do remote work - that last one is pretty common in the Tech industry).
2. Gives staff wider access to employers (Ie.e. if I am based in Bristol but working remotely, I can just as easily work for a company based in London as I could one based in Bristol)

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I was speaking to one Stockport based e-commerce business owner the other week. He originally advertised a role as remote being possible but ideally someone who can regularly or occasionally work from their Stockport office. After getting 230 applicants from people living in a commutable distance of Stockport, he decided to change the requirement to be someone who can work from their office post-COVID. While he said many of the applicants weren't suitable, he also said he had over 100+ local suitable applicants, rather than the 15-20 he expected and if he'd known he could get that many he wouldn't have bothered mentioning remote possible. The issue with that role could have been it is based within walking distance of Stockport station, a place well served by local and long distance trains.

Regarding the points you made about offices in central locations and yourself be willing to work for a London based company. I'm aware of one business who moved from a central London location to Surbiton to save money. If you were making a once a month trip to an office not far from Paddington station, would you be happy to carry on doing that if it meant 50 minutes of travelling after arriving at Paddington? And what if getting the first train from your local station, didn't get you in to Surbiton in time and you had to not only travel to Surbiton once a month but you had to stay in a hotel (at your own expense) once a month? If not, aren't your two of your potential advantages incompatible with each other?

Many people I have spoken to about this 'working from home' are now getting a little jarred off with it all, the level of service from Companies, so quite big, and some very big names has plummeted to rock bottom, I tend to agree, I too am fed up with either emails saying response time will be longer as staff are working from home, or telephone lines ring.....and ring...and then you get a message saying due to limited staff in the office(s) you may have longer to wait.
Back to work, use public transport, and just wear the bloody mask !

There was one Company I emailed about an item, and they said 'due to covid'......' our order completion times are now between 20 and 24 weeks' once I had stopped spluttering I said that I would not bother thankyou.

LAX54 said:

Many people I have spoken to about this 'working from home' are now getting a little jarred off with it all, the level of service from Companies, so quite big, and some very big names has plummeted to rock bottom, I tend to agree, I too am fed up with either emails saying response time will be longer as staff are working from home, or telephone lines ring.....and ring...and then you get a message saying due to limited staff in the office(s) you may have longer to wait.
Back to work, use public transport, and just wear the bloody mask !

There was one Company I emailed about an item, and they said 'due to covid'......' our order completion times are now between 20 and 24 weeks' once I had stopped spluttering I said that I would not bother thankyou.

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There should be fairly few excuses for longer lead times however even those (mostly due to supply issues) should be known in advance and so should be clear o before placing orders

Whilst with people working from home they may be doing unusual hours. However even then response times should be at sometime within 24 hours, maybe 48 hours. However that could mean that you could be provided with out of hours responses.

I suspect that those who are not doing so would have always offered poor customer service.

Like many I have been working at home for 9 months. Luckily for me it coincided with a project that I don't think I would have been able to handle the workload of unusually having to turn things round same day to avoid the whole thing going wrong if I had had three hours a day of travel plus office distractions. Epecially as the busy time was first and last thing in the day.

At times it was hard, but at times working in an office is hard.

The pluses. No alarm at 6AM, can do an 11 hour day and still feel fresher and have more evening time than a 7.5 hour day in the office. Not exhausted on Saturday and energy at the weekend. Can pop out and get non food shopping during the week

The minuses, some things more difficult to do without face to face. Not too bad in a family house with other people. Would be grim in a small flat.

I found it (having several teenage kids at home also doing schoolwork online) a bit like living in University student house. Slowly my working pattern became more like a student, some days work spanned the whole day from getting up to going to bed. Others less so. If you had a bad nights sleep you could switch everything off at lunchtime, have an afternoon kip then go back to it refreshed.

Not sure it is so good for less experienced workers who will miss out on the knowledge learned incidentally from being with colleagues in an office.

As to the future I think contracts will move towards your place of work being at home but you will be expected to attend the office to the extent needed to do your job. So it will be mix and match. Companies will have less desks than people as they cut back on expensive office space so you will have to book a desk in advance and blocj booking and sitting on your own will be frowned upon.

The danger. With workers sat at home, companies will question why they are paying people a salary to sit at home when they could just pay a small retainer and then pay piece rate for work actually done, which is how it was before the industrial revolution when people worked at home in cottage industries.

yorkie said:

I don't agree with any of this. Working from home is terrible for new recruits; some people will not work for a company that involves too much working from home; the idea that people are less intimidated by electronic communications than in person communications is not one I agree with either. I think a company that doesn't get its employees together on a regular basis is not going to do well.

That said a small company with a low staff turnover could do without an office providing they still meet up in other locations regularly, but for a company that is either medium or large in size and/or has a high turnover of staff, that's a poor choice in my opinion.

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My employer has embraced working from home for a long time, and has gone all in this year including running schemes like apprenticeships fully remotely. Clients have also done likewise, and both are looking at using the gains to support reductions in office space requirements. Even when in the office, I’ve had days when I’ve spent all day on calls - large chunks of my team are in India, so it’s rare that even face to face meetings don’t have a Teams component.

There are limits, and the point about getting together is important on many levels, but I don’t expect to be in an office more than a couple of days a week for the foreseeable future even once things open up. So much so that I’m investing in converting the garage to a home office, with work starting in a couple of weeks.

This is the traffic in our area this morning after the snow overnight. Our workplace - where most of us are working from home - is unaffected, but it's pleasing to think that some of our competitors (who are run by the "I need to watch over you while you work" brigade) are currently getting nothing done.

21C101 said:

Like many I have been working at home for 9 months. Luckily for me it coincided with a project that I don't think I would have been able to handle the workload of unusually having to turn things round same day to avoid the whole thing going wrong if I had had three hours a day of travel plus office distractions. Epecially as the busy time was first and last thing in the day.

At times it was hard, but at times working in an office is hard.

The pluses. No alarm at 6AM, can do an 11 hour day and still feel fresher and have more evening time than a 7.5 hour day in the office. Not exhausted on Saturday and energy at the weekend. Can pop out and get non food shopping during the week

The minuses, some things more difficult to do without face to face. Not too bad in a family house with other people. Would be grim in a small flat.

I found it (having several teenage kids at home also doing schoolwork online) a bit like living in University student house. Slowly my working pattern became more like a student, some days work spanned the whole day from getting up to going to bed. Others less so. If you had a bad nights sleep you could switch everything off at lunchtime, have an afternoon kip then go back to it refreshed.

Not sure it is so good for less experienced workers who will miss out on the knowledge learned incidentally from being with colleagues in an office.

As to the future I think contracts will move towards your place of work being at home but you will be expected to attend the office to the extent needed to do your job. So it will be mix and match. Companies will have less desks than people as they cut back on expensive office space so you will have to book a desk in advance and blocj booking and sitting on your own will be frowned upon.

The danger. With workers sat at home, companies will question why they are paying people a salary to sit at home when they could just pay a small retainer and then pay piece rate for work actually done, which is how it was before the industrial revolution when people worked at home in cottage industries.

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Like you I having been working from home for the last 9 months having not been to the office once in that time. My observations are similar:

The pluses, not having to commute for 2-2.5 hours every day, often on very trains. Being able to do quick shops, or just nice walks in my lunch hours / breaks.

The minuses, not commuting for one. This might sound strange but after a couple of months I actually found myself missing the buzz, the interactions you get on the commute. I always used to catch the first train of the day, so would always be up at 5. This hasn't changed, the only difference is that I now log on at 6 instead of around 7 when I would usually arrive at the office. However in terms of productivity, the lack of day to day stimulus is starting to have an effect, its not always easy to motivate and the lack of any face to face collaboration despite it being fairly sparse previously is starting to tell right across the team. MS Team meetings / events are far more laborious than the get togethers we used to have, and of the 3 virtual conferences we have held this year we've achieved less than one single actual gathering.

So when things calm down I can see myself doing a half & half, with a couple of days at least in the office and the rest from home.

DavidB said:

I don't think many people do actually expect that!

What a number of us do expect is that the long-term change is going to be a lot less than the hype has been trying to tell us - i.e. while there probably will be some long term increase in home working, a lot of the initial enthusiasm from both sides (staff and employers) is likely to wane and office use will increase again.

Employers will be looking at the bottom line and thinking how much they can save in office rents. However, in many cases the outcome will be that staff work less effectively, especially in businesses with a lot of collaborative working. Trying to do this over Teams or Zoom really isn't the same. It will also be increasingly difficult to incorporate new staff into established teams if they only see each other one day a month or fortnight.

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My employer’s work relies on collaborative working, and Skype, now Teams, were normal long before Covid. That now extends to running large scale workshops online, and setting up entire project teams entirely remotely.

it is genuinely surprising how much that we’d assumed relied on face to face contact can actually be done remotely. That has included negotiating large scale contracts, with all the workshopping and “lock in” meetings traditionally required, without face to face meetings.

Similarly, a friend works in a role that her employer (small firm, design & manufacturing) would never have pinned down as work from home; it’s debatable whether they’ll ever revert to the old patterns because they’ve found productivity has risen.

Its not a panacea - I find sustained calls hard work, and feel for colleagues without the dedicated space I enjoy - but it’s far more doable than the picture you paint assumes.

I have been working from home the past few months, and because I don't have a dedicated space to work (living in a 3 bedroom house with my mother and 2 brothers, with not much of a garden), I have found my productivity has dropped compared to being in the office.

I also miss the commute as it gave me chance to switch into/out of work mode at the start/end of each day.

And the money I'm saving not going round the chippy/corner shop of a lunchtime is nearly nonexistent as I'm ordering Greggs or Costa in instead, plus I'm having to make a weekly trip to the Post office to pay in the money for the rent/poll tax/gas/electric instead of doing it in my lunchbreak in the corner shop by the office.

That and I'm taking less pictures, thus missing some unusual workings of the 3 main bus operators that pass my office

Bald Rick said:

I agree to some extent, although some people will of course prefer zoom / teams etc compared to a long commute. However, I also reckon that most people are looking at this from the perspective of today, when most office based people are having to work at home. When restrictions are eased, and people start being able to have meetings in person, it will become more difficult for those not physically in the meeting to participate fully. Partly this will be the technology, and partly the psychology.

On the latter point, when your boss and, say, more than half your colleagues are in the meeting room, I suspect it will be difficult for many people to say “I’m working at home because I don’t fancy the commute”. Clearly there will be people who overcome that, and some meetings will still be easier remotely, but I strongly suspect that people who currently think they’ll be working at home, say, 3 days a week may find that a little optimistic.

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Where I work they see having older more energy inefficient buildings as not a good thing. In its place will be buildings where people can gather to meet in person from time to time. The rest of the time they will be working at home. Going to an office will be a thing done semi-regularly.

Your place of work will mostly be your home. This also means that commuting costs will be met by the employer as most of ones time will be at home.

However, the employer will have a lower facilities cost due to less staff being in at any one time.

This is probably a terrible idea but why doesn't the government introduce a working from home tax for people who decide to work from home 5 days a week. The tax would be the equivalent to the cost of a season ticket. The main aim of it would be to get people to go into the office at least 1 day a week. This could help recouparate the costs of the pandemic. It wouldn't apply to self employed people.

Obviously this could only be implemented after the restrictions are lifted.

infobleep said:

Your place of work will mostly be your home. This also means that commuting costs will be met by the employer as most of ones time will be at home.

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I'm not sure that HMRC or employers would be keen on people claiming expenses for going into the office.

Peregrine 4903 said:

This is probably a terrible idea but why doesn't the government introduce a working from home tax for people who decide to work from home 5 days a week. The tax would be the equivalent to the cost of a season ticket. The main aim of it would be to get people to go into the office at least 1 day a week. This could help recouparate the costs of the pandemic. It wouldn't apply to self employed people.

Obviously this could only be implemented after the restrictions are lifted.

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Somebody raised this on another thread. Completely impractical and unenforceable.

Peregrine 4903 said:

This is probably a terrible idea but why doesn't the government introduce a working from home tax for people who decide to work from home 5 days a week. The tax would be the equivalent to the cost of a season ticket. The main aim of it would be to get people to go into the office at least 1 day a week. This could help recouparate the costs of the pandemic. It wouldn't apply to self employed people.

Obviously this could only be implemented after the restrictions are lifted.

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We're all going to have to pay a lot more in taxes soon, so taxing people told to stay at home will be deeply unpopular.

Peregrine 4903 said:

This is probably a terrible idea but why doesn't the government introduce a working from home tax for people who decide to work from home 5 days a week. The tax would be the equivalent to the cost of a season ticket. The main aim of it would be to get people to go into the office at least 1 day a week. This could help recouparate the costs of the pandemic. It wouldn't apply to self employed people.

Obviously this could only be implemented after the restrictions are lifted.

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As someone who's worked at home since 2009, to avoid having to move house when the office I worked in was closed, it's probably not surprising that I think that's a terrible idea. If nothing else, do you seriously think the government would pass the money on to transport operators to recompense them for loss of income, rather than just keeping it? How would it be enforced anyway - would I have to clock into an office or could I just buy a ticket to the nearest one once a week but not get on the train?

JonathanH said:

I'm not sure that HMRC or employers would be keen on people claiming expenses for going into the office.

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Expenses are allowed for travel to somewhere other than a permanent place of work. If your employer designates your home as your permanent place of work then travel anywhere else can be claimed. I suspect it would be seen as defrauding the system if someone who mostly worked elsewhere in an office was designated as a home worker.

edwin_m said:

As someone who's worked at home since 2009, to avoid having to move house when the office I worked in was closed, it's probably not surprising that I think that's a terrible idea. If nothing else, do you seriously think the government would pass the money on to transport operators to recompense them for loss of income, rather than just keeping it? How would it be enforced anyway - would I have to clock into an office or could I just buy a ticket to the nearest one once a week but not get on the train?

Expenses are allowed for travel to somewhere other than a permanent place of work. If your employer designates your home as your permanent place of work then travel anywhere else can be claimed. I suspect it would be seen as defrauding the system if someone who mostly worked elsewhere in an office was designated as a home worker.

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They definitely shouldn't pass it on to other transport operators. More to fund all their borrowing.

Like people have said it seems to be unenforceable like I suspected. Oh well, just an idea.

Peregrine 4903 said:

This is probably a terrible idea but why doesn't the government introduce a working from home tax for people who decide to work from home 5 days a week. The tax would be the equivalent to the cost of a season ticket. The main aim of it would be to get people to go into the office at least 1 day a week. This could help recouparate the costs of the pandemic. It wouldn't apply to self employed people.

Obviously this could only be implemented after the restrictions are lifted.

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My season ticket to get from home to work by public transport is £0 (as there's no public transport which does the less than a mile between the two), however for my wife it would be significant (although she can WFH 100% due to being science lab based) as there's no viable public transport option (takes 2 hours with the need to change trains and buses about 4 times).

For these reasons alone such a tax would be difficult to introduce.

Peregrine 4903 said:

This is probably a terrible idea but why doesn't the government introduce a working from home tax for people who decide to work from home 5 days a week. The tax would be the equivalent to the cost of a season ticket. The main aim of it would be to get people to go into the office at least 1 day a week. This could help recouparate the costs of the pandemic. It wouldn't apply to self employed people.

Obviously this could only be implemented after the restrictions are lifted.

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Why target home workers specifically? Some of whom have had pay cuts and worked harder than ever during the pandemic.

JonathanH said:

I'm not sure that HMRC or employers would be keen on people claiming expenses for going into the office.

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Your usual place of work is at home so why should it be no different to claim for a trip to Birmingham on expenses?

I am also told that if I start work at a different location to where I usually work, I can claim any expenses to get to that place or from that place to work.

Obviously if I had a sesoan ticket I wouldn't claim as I use they for rgeular commuting to the office.

infobleep said:

Your usual place of work is at home so why should it be no different to claim for a trip to Birmingham on expenses?

I am also told that if I start work at a different location to where I usually work, I can claim any expenses to get to that place or from that place to work.

Obviously if I had a sesoan ticket I wouldn't claim as I use they for rgeular commuting to the office.

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You could flip the argument on its head - should people working from home start claiming expenses for extra heating, electricity etc that they wouldn't need if working in the office?

Ianno87 said:

Why target home workers specifically? Some of whom have had pay cuts and worked harder than ever during the pandemic.

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It was a just a suggestion to try and get people back into offices at least some of the time, so they can contribute to the economy and fund borrowing, not a very good suggestion it seems.

But I do think we need to think outside the box in terms of economic recovery from this pandemic.

Ianno87 said:

You could flip the argument on its head - should people working from home start claiming expenses for extra heating, electricity etc that they wouldn't need if working in the office?

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Yes they should even though most don't/won't. A good example is most people don't realise they can claim an allowance to clean their uniforms (where applicable) when they should (even if it is just for the statutory minimum where checks are non existent). A lot of these things can be done via the hmrc government gateway portal with minimal effort.

Most people are lazy and won't know/care to know what reliefs they can get and I doubt this will change. I only know about some of these things because my accountant brought it up as something to suggest to my father. Subsequently he's taught everyone he works with how to do it.

Ianno87 said:

You could flip the argument on its head - should people working from home start claiming expenses for extra heating, electricity etc that they wouldn't need if working in the office?

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There's already a tax rebate that covers that... https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home (although capped at £1.20 a week so nowhere near normal office overheads).

I’ve no idea how it could be implemented but I did float the idea of a working from home tax a few weeks back. These people in the ‘new world’ are raking it in with their full salaries, no travel costs and then not putting anything back into the economy by not busing coffee, lunch, socialising after work etc.

Hadders said:

I’ve no idea how it could be implemented but I did float the idea of a working from home tax a few weeks back. These people in the ‘new world’ are raking it in with their full salaries, no travel costs and then not putting anything back into the economy by not busing coffee, lunch, socialising after work etc.

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Just remember, many of us have been told to work from home. Its not necessarily a choice.