02 September 2020
The Inner City
Time to repurpose?
By John Watson
As the government begins the push to get workers back into their offices, two quite difficult rationales are beginning to emerge. The first is to get the organisations for which they work back to full capacity, enabling them to carry on their businesses, make profits, provide services to the public or otherwise fulfil their raisons d’être. Here the nature of the balance which has to be struck is quite clear. Does having people working from home reduce efficiency? If so, is that sufficiently significant to outweigh the ancillary benefits, less risk of sickness, a saving in travel time, in the long term perhaps lower office costs? If it is really the case that a business works equally well with people working remotely, or if remote working will increase profitability or efficiency in the long term, then the logical course for an employer must be to continue at least some home working on a permanent basis.
The fact that the nature of the issue is clear does not, of course, make it simple to resolve. There are lots of complicating factors. Some people prefer working at home. Unions may feel that opposing an early return is a good way of showing their members that they have some muscle. Health risks have to be thrown into the balance. But in the end this will all shake itself out. In the private sector businesses who call the balance wrong will be outstripped by their competitors. In the public sector the consequences of staying at home may be less acute but in the end inefficiency will become obvious, inefficient workers or departments will be identified.
The second reason is quite different. Among the cries from ministers for employees to return to their offices you hear a different note, a call for employees to do their part towards preserving the life of our city centres. Listen for a moment to Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee which represents the views of Conservative MPs:
“We can all see the devastating consequences for many businesses when a huge proportion of the customers on whom they depend aren’t coming into our towns and cities.”
Or Ian Duncan Smith, erstwhile leader of the party:
“The reality is that small businesses that provide the vast majority of jobs in the UK rely on people in city centres being back in their offices.
If they do not go back many of those businesses will collapse, which will lead to higher unemployment and in turn impact on people’s mental and physical health.”
These are not calls for workers to return to the office in order to better perform their function but rather calls to provide custom for those businesses which support the city centres, café’s, bars, restaurants, transport, office cleaners, and all the rest of it. As a way of pushing people to their desks these calls lack teeth. An employee is usually under an obligation to try to help his or her employer carry out its function as effectively as possible, but an obligation to buy coffee, use the tube, support other inner-city services even when the employee would be more efficient working from home? Really?
Of course many of us have a favourite restaurant which we like to frequent or perhaps a small theatre to which we are prepared to make a contribution to ensure its survival but the transport infrastructure? The big service companies? How many of us really feel a loyalty to these?
The reality must be that the proportion of workers who return to their desks will be determined by whether or not it helps them and their organisations to function and not by any form of loyalty to the inner city economy. If people come to the conclusion that working, at least in part, from home provides a satisfactory service, nothing is going to prevent a reduction in the number of workers and businesses which service inner-city workers and the economy is going to have to adjust to that. A level of service which is not needed will inevitably disappear but to some extent it will be replaced by more outlets elsewhere. As people working from home do not actually take a monastic vow to give up all life’s pleasures, services which were previously focused on the city centres will be needed in more residential areas as a drink with colleagues after work is replaced by a drink with the neighbours, the coffee in Bishopsgate is replaced by the coffee in Camden, the shirt shops in the City are supplemented by those in the suburbs.
The challenge to government is not so much how to prevent this occurring – trying to push back this particular wave would be a job worthy of Canute – but how to ease the process of change by removing obstacles. Planning regulations should be eased and a careful watch should be kept on business rates to ensure that the high street has cafes and bookshops and not just estate agents. If decentralisation resulted in more vibrant local centres living standards could be improved for those who live nearby.
Attention also needs to be given to the diminishing city centres. Back in the early 70s there was a “doughnut effect” under which city centres declined and all the wealthier residents were found living in the suburbs. As a nation which lives largely in cities, it is important that we do not go there again which means that the withdrawal of business from city centres must be compensated by a higher residential population and the parks, theatres and gardens which would follow it. We may not be able to turn London into a garden city but we might get to a stage where living in Bedford Square is no longer an eccentricity – after all that is just a case of converting buildings back to their original use.
All of this will require a quite extraordinary amount of imagination and effort with plenty of false starts on the way but there are advantages worth pursuing. Having people spend more time working near where they live will cut down considerably on travel congestion and make a contribution to a cleaner and more environmentally friendly world. It should give them more free time too. The trouble is that, good though that sounds, it is a benefit for the future while the pain is immediate. It is time to take a deep breath.
