01Introduction

Just after the start of the pandemic, many commentators said the world of work had changed forever. UK surveys in 2021,1 and then 2022,2 made predictions that the working patterns in the immediate wake of the pandemic were here to stay, permanently.

The pandemic did change working patterns. But what it did not do was suspend the workings of agglomeration that shape the geography of the economy. Ideas are still shared and generated through face-to-face interactions. So fully remote working, particularly for high-productivity, knowledge-intensive activities that concentrate in city centres, was unlikely to become the dominant model post-pandemic.

This report is a follow-up to Centre for Cities’ first report in 2023 describing the world of work post-Covid.3 It summarised the agglomeration literature, and how this phenomenon concentrated the UK’s knowledge-intensive activities into central London. These established, long term economic forces explain why predictions of a shift to fully remote working post-pandemic have not materialised.

The report undertook a survey of central London office workers in April 2023, finding that there had been a strong return to the office from almost zero commuting during the first round of restrictions in 2020.

That survey provided a valuable baseline. However, at the time, the last Covid restrictions had ended only a year prior. A year further on, there has been more time for the dust to settle. As the direct influence of the pandemic fades, this report answers the following questions:

  • How have working patterns for central London office workers changed since last year?
  • How does London compare to other large global cities?
  • If there has been a return to the office, why? What is the role of mandates versus worker preferences in setting working patterns?
  • How close are we to the ‘new normal’ of office working patterns, if at all?
  • What does this mean for the future of city centre office working?

Centre for Cities commissioned follow-up surveys in June 2024 on employees but also employers in central London offices, to compare the roles of both. This report also casts the net wider, with comparable surveys in five other global cities: Paris, New York, Singapore, Sydney, and Toronto (see Box 1). These are a sample of London’s international competitor cities when it comes to high-skill, high-productivity city centres made up of office-based, knowledge-intensive activities.

Section 1 considers how working patterns in London have evolved since Covid, while Section 2 considers London’s position internationally. Section 3 looks at why the return to the office has occurred through the roles of employers and employees. Section 4 considers the future of working patterns to understand how current working patterns are approaching the ‘new normal’. Finally, Section 5 summarises and provides policy recommendations.

Box 1: Surveys

Six worker and six decision maker surveys were conducted by Savanta (for Toronto and Sydney) and FocalData (for all other cities) on behalf of Centre for Cities. The Paris survey was translated to French; all other surveys were in English.

Sample size: For each city 1,000 workers and 250 decision makers were targeted, except in Singapore (400 workers and 100 decision makers).4

Sample selection: All workers surveyed were office workers aged 18 and above, with contracted days between Monday and Friday and with offices within the Central Business District (CBD) of their city (see Figure 1).5 In each city, commuting data was analysed to determine the target proportion surveyed inside and outside the metropolitan area.6 The same applied to surveyed employers, but restricted to those who described themselves as a director, manager, or decision maker.7

Weighting results: All results were weighted by industry and gender, taken from national employment statistics covering the CBD areas.8

Identifying CBDs: CBDs for each city were identified using data on employment density clusters in each city (see Figure 1). London’s CBD includes Canary Wharf.

 Figure 1: Map of Central Business Districts across all six surveyed cities

Source: OpenStreetMaps contributors, Centre for Cities’ calculations.

Footnotes

  • 1 ‘Hybrid working is here to stay, say managers’, BBC News, 18 February 2022.
  • 2 ONS (2022), Is hybrid working here to stay?, London: Office for National Statistics.
  • 3 Swinney P and Vera O (2023), Office politics: London and the rise of home working, London: Centre for Cities.
  • 4 After data cleaning, in each city this led to the following sample sizes: London (1,023 workers and 256 decision makers); Paris (1,041 and 260); New York (1,034 and 251); Singapore (398 and 100); Sydney (1,061 and 263); and Toronto (1,053 and 329).
  • 5 This included fully remote workers, who would otherwise perform their work in an office in the CBD if they were not fully remote.
  • 6 E.g., for London this was 75 per cent inside Greater London, and 25 per cent outside.
  • 7 Decision maker surveys additionally restricted respondents to being 25 or over.
  • 8 Sources: NOMIS (London), Insee (Paris), US Census Bureau (New York); SingStat (Singapore); ABS (Sydney); and StatCan (Toronto).