Remote working is killing city centres...but what's the alternative?

[Eastie77]

Reading today about Pret cutting almost 3,000 jobs and articles about the death of city centres due to the lack of office workers. My company has announced that all employees can work from home for another year. I honestly doubt our central London office will re-open or at least in the form it took before, ie they may just keep renting part of it for occasional client meetings.

The government is pushing workers back into the office but realistically people are not going to go back while they have the option to WFH and companies have realised they can save on office costs and get the same output from their staff. I am happy to WFH but I really feel for all the local businesses that relied on office workers and are now facing closure. I work close to our office and 6 independent coffee shops and small cafes have closed😔 Not sure what the answer is.

I worked from home exclusively for 15 years in London as a senior executive at a major (top 20) Silicon Valley technology company. We only went to the office for client meetings we hosted.

The real issue here (although mass wfh is an issue too) is the fact that circa 100,000 people or more have been made redundant, many over 45 highly skilled professionals who are high earners and pay LOTS of tax to Help dig us out of the financial abyss we are in.

Except there are no jobs for this section of the workforce. Ageism is rife in the U.K. and the government needs to devise a way through tax breaks or something to get our huge workforce in employment by making companies create jobs.

That is an over simplistic view.

We have to take a broader and long term view. People don’t want to work until old age. Retirement will cease to exist without pensions. Pension funds are invested in commercial properties. Commercial properties comprise of city buildings.

Infrastructure, secondary schools, universities, hospitals, services, universities and so on are funded by taxes - our taxes which are already set to spike upwards. The Gov can’t build more but smaller of everything and all the support services they need. Private health and private education in a time of high unemployment and lower salaries. The figures don’t add up.

My post was in reply to Egghead

@Alongcameacat I disagree. I am blessed and fortunate to be highly educated and highly paid professional unmarried with no children paying high taxes and happy to do it because that is the law and my obligation as a citizen and I would be fine with a tax increase to fund schools nhs etc. At least 30 of my coworkers have been made redundant and they are not buying season tickets, lunches or paying taxes.

Gothamgirl1970

Unfortunately, financially you are in the minority. You and those in a similar situation cannot support the economy long term. That is not how society works. People really need to look outside their own small bubble and realise that they are not islands. Presumably you have private health insurance and huge savings to support your old age or sooner if you find you have to stop working for any other reason?

Is wfh working for the customer.

I have had a frustrating time in the last few weeks with not being able to speak to the relevant person because everyone is wfh.

If you are wfh and your job can be done remotely isn’t it only a matter of time that your job will be outsourced to someone around the world that could do it for cheaper.

Oliversmumsarmy surely the issue is either how much wfh there is, or just badly managed. There have been threads of companies using the pandemic to cover for poor service, using it as an excuse.

Pension funds are invested in commercial properties. Commercial properties comprise of city buildings

Pension funds are/should be spreading the risk with investments across a range of different sectors. Some are always going to do better than others.

Additionally if properties aren’t needed for commerce they could be converted for residential use so rents can still be collected.

They are invested where there is most return and up until the recent WFH phase, that was commercial property. It isn’t a case of cashing them in and reinvesting elsewhere now. It doesn’t work like that. Hundreds of thousands of pensions will collapse.
Office units are not suited as residential homes. When cities are empty and unemployment is high, who do you propose they are sold/rented to as residential homes?

@Oliversmumsarmy

Is wfh working for the customer.

I have had a frustrating time in the last few weeks with not being able to speak to the relevant person because everyone is wfh.

If you are wfh and your job can be done remotely isn’t it only a matter of time that your job will be outsourced to someone around the world that could do it for cheaper.

WFH seems to be working for business to business and staff to staff communication but is a disaster for customers/consumers who are now having extreme difficulty in contacting organisations and businesses. They need to solve this - customers will put up with it temporarily, but we're at six months now and firms/organisations really should have got systems in place for usable live chat, telephone and email facilities by now. If they can't get it to work via WFH then they need to get their staff back into call centres and customer service depts otherwise they'll not have any business left.

@Egghead68

Pension funds are invested in commercial properties. Commercial properties comprise of city buildings

Pension funds are/should be spreading the risk with investments across a range of different sectors. Some are always going to do better than others.

Additionally if properties aren’t needed for commerce they could be converted for residential use so rents can still be collected.

Small pension schemes aren't allowed to invest in residential property. Gordon Brown's pension changes initially allowed for residential property investments but he bottled it and prohibited them at the last minute. So huge numbers of people, say with SIPPs, can only invest in commercial property and are prohibited by law from investing in residential. Good old Gordon screws it up again!

That law can be changed.

That law can be changed

What do you propose are done with the existing investments and pensions?

You are not thinking things through.

@Alongcameacat gently please check your perceptions at the door. I don’t have private health care because I’ve had breast ovarian uterine cervical cancer and multiple myeloma and I had a heart attack age 43 and now have sinus tachycardia so no one will insure new.

Yes at one time I had a lovely savings and had planned an early and luxe retirement but that all went to shit when my husband got a 19 year old pregnant, kill himself while I was in the house and found out after his death he had 3 other children during the 14.5 years we were married who all had entitlement to the estate which also had a heavy debt load that I had to pay off.

I’m no kind of angel and my parents gave me a good education and I worked hard to come out of that disaster I have enough to meet my needs and my cats and be happy and won’t use the modest savings I have so as a fellow human being I can help more. I’m no martyr and I know I can’t save the world but maybe I could do something

You couldn’t possibly walk a mile in my shoes having to rebuild after your husband kills himself 6 inches from your face and you have CPTSD and have to try to work.

We all aren’t sitting here bathing in white privilege.

Apology accepted

@Egghead68

That law can be changed.

Then we'll end up with everyone ploughing their pension monies into houses, thus fueling house price inflation, if you change the law to allow pensions to invest in residential property. That's exactly what happened when Gordon Brown's changes were about to be instigate - an entire industry set up virtually overnight operating residential pension schemes - the sheer scale of it is was caused Brown to change it at the last minute - all those firms weren't happy!

It'd take some clever law drafting for pension funds to be able to invest in ex-commercial property to covert it into residential.

It's one of the reasons why there are lots of industrial/commercial buildings converted into hotels - a hotel is a "commercial" building, so can be legally owned by a pension scheme and rented out to a hotel operating company.

Gothamgirl1970 My post was in response to what you wrote when you said highly educated and highly paid professional unmarried with no children paying high taxes and happy to do it. I’m unsure why you brought white privilege into the topic.

None of us have any idea what other poster’s circumstances are apart from what they say in their contributions to a thread. I have nothing to apologise for, as fbnothing I posted suggested racism in any shape or form.

Radio 4’s got a Rethink programme starting now about the effects on cities.

I’m listening egghead

These were some of the thoughts from the Rethink programme:

City centres repurposed as leisure centres with attractions such as trampoline parks, cycle paths, green spaces, markets and food trucks and al fresco eating.

“Inside out” cities like Cambridge where most people work out of town and the centre is retail and attractions with good transport links between the two (including driverless vehicles, bike lanes etc).

Cities breaking down into “15-min” local clusters where everyone does everything within a 15-min walk.

City centres will become younger as older people will avoid them due to the infection risk.

Cities are all different and there’s no one-size-fits-all blueprint for the future.

Or people just get back to work.

@Oliversmumsarmy indeed. For some of us, wfh is depressing and isolating. I hate it. It is resoundingly shite for my mental health. If loads of folk want to stay wfh and they’re allowed to then great. It’ll mean public transport is less busy for one thing. But would I fuck support everyone working from home as the norm for the future.

I’m working anyhow. Makes no difference where I sit when I do it (apart from that as an extremely clinically vulnerable person I am much safer doing it from hone).

I didn't realise how stressful it was incorporating going to work into the school run until now. So much easier now I am just taking the DC to school and then going home. I can just pull on any old clothes and don't have to worry about rushing to the office.

I completely understand some people hate WFH and I hope the option to go back to the office is available to those people soon. I have colleagues who were in tears when they heard our office will be closed for another year. However I think it's unfair to call people who want to continue WFH selfish and accuse them of an "I'm alright Jack" attitude.

However I think it's unfair to call people who want to continue WFH selfish and accuse them of an "I'm alright Jack" attitude

But isn’t that exactly what the wfh people are doing.

They only see the positives for them. They don’t see the person on the phone trying to get hold of someone to explain why a guaranteed payment hasnt arrived and all they can get hold of is a receptionist who doesn’t know what to go as there is no one in the office.

They don’t see the knock on effect of not buying lunch/newspaper/coffee at the local shops and driving those people out of a business and making others redundant.

If your job is able to be done remotely then why would your company spend tens of thousands paying you when it could get a much cheaper person from a much cheaper country to do the same job.