AIBU London weighting

[Ewe202]

My firm has said that anyone who wants to work from home will have to have a change of contract and will lose their London weighting. Everyone seems to think LW is just travel costs but I need LW to be able to afford my mortgage. Price of houses is mad enough and we only just managed to get on the ladder. If I lose my LW I’m worried we’ll struggle to renew next year and will never be able to move up the ladder. My health has massively improved with wfh and even my boss says my work has been great over the pandemic. But I simply can’t afford to lose the LW. AIBU to be annoyed at people who just see it as covering travel costs?? It’s more to do with property and living costs as a whole bunch surely???

Could you not opt to return to office and keep it?

YABU because they don't need to pay you the premium for living close to/in London if you're not working from the office. At least they're giving you an option rather than arbitrarily deciding either way for you.

Ask how often you need to be in the office to keep your London weighting then make a decision on what's best for you and your family.

Option 1: Losing money and accepting the trade off is better health for you but having to change how you handle your finances/tightening your belts

Option 2: Stick with WFH but move somewhere more compatible with your salary

Option 3: Go back to the office for the minimum amount of days required

Option 4: Do option 3 but actively look for work elsewhere that matches your salary and WFH needs

@PairOfPears

I agree that the OP no longer needs to live near London but the fact remains she does and surely you can’t expect someone to sell up and move, potentially uprooting a whole family, and incurring lots of moving costs because her employer is quite suddenly proposing a significant reduction in salary?

OP, do you have the option to continue working in the office and maintain your upweighted salary?

Agree with you, but from what was said, I read it as being her choice to remain WFH, therefore she can't have it both ways.

@emmathedilemma

I've always understood it to be to cover the higher costs of living but then other cities have high costs of living (admittedly probably not as high as London) and we don't get an uplift.

That's always been my understanding, too, and I agree with you about other areas being as expensive as some parts of London.

My house in Sussex is now worth 25% more than the one I sold 30 years ago in Croydon, but back then they were worth the same amount. And my council tax is £300 a year more.

I get where your employer is coming from though, OP. If you wfh, you could move to a much cheaper area and be quids in. I think you need to decide what's more important to you, your health or the money. And look at economies you could make if you really want to to continue to wfh.

Also bear in mind that losing £1kpa gross only results in a net pay reduction of £680 (less when you factor in pension contributions or are a higher rate taxpayer), so the financial hit may be less than you think.

Might your employer be prepared to offset the saving from you wfh a little by paying an allowance towards the extra costs in energy, water etc? I used to get £25 a month plus internet and line rental paid when I worked from home in a previous job. You might be able to recoup a bit that way.

My job has been permanently wfh for 10 years. When my contract changed, I was offered wfh with no London weighting or office based with.
I live in London but the advantages of wfh for me were more inportant than London weighting.

London weighting was regarding travel cost OR higher living costs eg if you had to rent somewhere mon-fri and travel home for the weekend. So up to you how it was spent, but wouldn’t cover both. (1970s/ 1980s civil service).
But you did have to actually work in London, so if you are currently not doing so, I would expect a change in contract and payment to reflect that.

problem is the London housing market has crashed and some people will be left in negative equity, so moving is not so simple.

It should be paid on residence, working from home or not. I have a friend who works for a London employer, but she's been working from home for 6 years now. Yet she continued to get London weighting.

Your friend is either lucky or HR have missed that one - or both?!

Companies are also having to look at ways to save money. As places start to reopen I can also see many removing staff perks like free tea/coffee, no authorised overtime, people having to reapply for their jobs and more. Especially those companies that was furloughing staff. If they haven't been making money or worse losing money they have to recoup that money from somewhere and not all those costs will be passed onto the consumer. How many companies can afford to write off their debts? How many companies can afford to have them written off?

One of the many reasons for not wanting the lockdown was the economical impact this will have because all that money need to be paid from somewhere.

If your not happy with the conditions of your work, regardless of the reason why stick around making yourself miserable? Look for something that fits more with your wants. I've left loads of jobs because I wasn't happy, life is too short to waste on being miserable.

Well, luckily for you you have a choice. If you want LW, you can go back to work

LW is to cover the cost of living in or commuting to work in London.

Btw re the cost of living in London. It's sky high. Tony Blair made it into a playground for the rich. He saw it solely as a place to make money out of. Consequently it's no longer as it was when LW was first introduced - a little bit more expensive to live there. It's many times more. It's now one of the most expensive cities in the world to live. Hence its status as the UK's capital of homelessness. 165,000 homeless Londoners. More people than the entire populations of many other UK towns and cities.

@vivainsomnia

problem is the London housing market has crashed and some people will be left in negative equity, so moving is not so simple.

It should be paid on residence, working from home or not. I have a friend who works for a London employer, but she's been working from home for 6 years now. Yet she continued to get London weighting.

Why should it be based on residence though?

If the employers don't require her to live in London, and could just as easily hire someone from Hull, why should they subsidise her living costs? Some parts of London are cheaper than some naice Home Counties towns. Should people who live there also be paid more 'based on residence'?

Why not there used to be a Cambridge allowance. Think that went in the 90s.

@Bargebill19

Why not there used to be a Cambridge allowance. Think that went in the 90s.

But if place of residence is of no importance to an employee's ability to do the job, why should employers subsidise their choice to live in an expensive town?

Didn't you pay for travel before covid? So with the pandemic you've already made a lot of savings. So removing the London weighting might balance it out a bit?

This is interesting to see a real life example because in all the threads about WFH on MN throughout the pandemic it seemed anybody who brought something like this up was shot down. It makes perfect sense form your employés point of view. You do not need to be in London anymore for the role so they no longer pay you London weighting. Now it’s your choice to sell your house and move somewhere cheaper.

If you don’t want to sell your house you need to go back into the office.

The London housing market has not crashed.

Prices still increased. Just not as much as other parts of the UK.

Some parts of London are cheaper than some naice Home Counties towns

Yes true. And parts of Cheshire and North Yorkshire. Rishi Sunak's constituency, for example, is more expensive to buy in than some London boroughs.

@IcedPurple I guess it was to attract the best people for the job?
As I said upthread, so long as you worked in the city, you could use it for the extra transport costs or for living costs. It was up to you. Therefore if you chose to live outside the city, you were using it for transport costs. There was no requirement to prove it with train receipt or rental agreement etc.
The thing is you had to physically work in the city. Not work from home elsewhere in the country. (Which the op appears to be doing)

[quote Bargebill19]@IcedPurple I guess it was to attract the best people for the job?
As I said upthread, so long as you worked in the city, you could use it for the extra transport costs or for living costs. It was up to you. Therefore if you chose to live outside the city, you were using it for transport costs. There was no requirement to prove it with train receipt or rental agreement etc.
The thing is you had to physically work in the city. Not work from home elsewhere in the country. (Which the op appears to be doing)[/quote]
Sure - if you require people to be physically present in an expensive city, then you need to make it worth their while if you want to attract the best candidates. However, if your physical location is of no relevant to your ability to do the job, then I don't see why employers need to subsidise an employee's choice to live in London. And they've offered her the option to return to the office and still claim LW, so I think she is BU if she wants to WFH and retain London Weighting.

@IcedPurple
Agree which is why I said exactly the same in my first post. The op needs to expect that her contract and wages will be altered.

Look for a WFH job in London.

Though I say as a Northerner, the London companies all seem to be on the lookout for Northern staff, tempting us in with London salaries. Competition could increase :)

@IcedPurple
If the employers don't require her to live in London, and could just as easily hire someone from Hull, why should they subsidise her living costs.

This is the bit my Cambridge comment was referring to - the company could pay an uplift should they want to. Just as some did for Cambridge based workers decades ago. Eg it’s not just a London based thing.

Think we’ve had crossed wires and that I apologise for.

@LuxOlente most emails I’ve received recently are all offering London salaries and hybrid working.
Having moved down from London due to cost these are quite tempting! Couple of nights with the city buzz, then home to my nice garden

Why would anyone continue to stay in London…?

[quote Bargebill19]@IcedPurple
If the employers don't require her to live in London, and could just as easily hire someone from Hull, why should they subsidise her living costs.

This is the bit my Cambridge comment was referring to - the company could pay an uplift should they want to. Just as some did for Cambridge based workers decades ago. Eg it’s not just a London based thing.

Think we’ve had crossed wires and that I apologise for.[/quote]
No need to apologise!

You should check the terms of your contract.