Susan Hall: ‘There’s no point resisting the three-day week’

The working from home revolution has become too entrenched to reverse, the Conservative candidate for London mayor has said.

It comes as firms downsize and abandon large offices in the capital to accommodate staff choosing to work from home on Mondays and Fridays, leaving much of the city operating on an effective three-day week.

The Tory London mayoral candidate taking on Sadiq Khan in the 2024 election said: “I think we’ve very much moved into a three-day week and I don’t think that that can necessarily be taken back.

“We’re living in a different world now and it wouldn’t be for the mayor to dictate what they [workers] do.”

Her comments follow the departure of a number of businesses from the capital, which have looked to cut costs by shrinking their footprint in London as employees shun the office in the wake of the pandemic.

Canary Wharf has been hit with a string of high-profile exits in recent months, including HSBC and Clifford Chance, while retailer John Lewis said in July it would halve the size of its office space in London after thousands of staff chose to continue working from home.

Her comments are in stark contrast to remarks made by the Chancellor in May, who said the “default” location for workers should be in the office unless there is a good reason to work from home.

Some office-working advocates argue home working is bad for productivity and results in less money flowing into the economy, with fewer daily commuters spending on rail fares and food and drink in cities.

However, Ms Hall said hybrid working was the new normal after the pandemic, saying: “Take John Lewis as an example: they used to have two large buildings in Victoria. I believe they’ve sold one, or they’ve certainly emptied one out.

“So very often these big companies that work from this area [central London] are reducing the size of their work space, so they couldn’t accommodate people coming back.

“In City Hall, where we are, they couldn’t accommodate all their staff being in five days a week. So we have to live with what we’ve got and we are in a post-Covid world.”

She caveated it was “absolutely vital” to encourage businesses to invest in London, in particular the city’s night-time economy.

“Young people in my office are telling me that even if they go out for a meal the restaurants are starting to really shut down by half-past nine,” she said.

“We also need to look at the offer of transport at night-time. Because if you go out for an evening out you want to know that you can get home.”

Asked whether she would reduce the cost of public transport in the city to encourage workers to commute into the office, Ms Hall said: “Whatever I promise, I will deliver – and I cannot promise that.”

“I don’t know the state of TfL [Transport for London] finances in a year’s time. I don’t know the state of the Mayor’s finances and clearly that would cost a lot of money.”

Fares rose 5.9pc in March, making the cost of journeys on London’s transport 10p higher for buses and 30p higher for a single trip on the Underground in Zone 1, while those travelling into the city from commuter towns such as Peterborough now face paying close to £8,000 for an annual season ticket.

Ms Hall emphasised her commitment to scrapping the Ulez expansion to outer London because of the lack of alternative means of travel other than by car in the city’s periphery.