the way we work has changed for ever. the impact of work from home post—pandemic is probably the biggest change to hit society since maybe world war ii. it's just impacted everything. now, many businesses across the uk want their workers to come into the office more. if in six months time, we were looking for a member of staff and someone was to say, "three days a week in the office "doesn't suit me," well, then we'd have to probably say, "maybe this isn't the right role for you." are you angry?! crowd roars but some staff are fighting back. we will never see this opportunity again. we have to fight for workers�* rights, and i'm proud to do that. people who drive trains have to go to work. people who work in operating theatres have to go to work. they have children.

they have problems. they have issues. you deal with it. so is it time we got back to the office more? welcome to brocket hall, a fine stately home just outside london, equipped with two golf courses. since the pandemic, there's been an explosion in the popularity of golf, with a 300% increase in the number of rounds played. it's notjust the need for fresh air that's made it more popular. the most growth has been during the working week, with an almost 350% rise in rounds of golf. some people are mixing work with pleasure.

working on my own, ifind i am better than working in an office. i get distracted more in an office. and being here, then i can go and play golf. stuart, a recruitment consultant, works two or three days a week from the office and two days a week from here at the clubhouse. some people listening to that, though, might be a bit surprised. i can understand that. but then that's a bit of a... it's a carrot, isn't it? you can see, like, "oh, if i get this done, "i can then do that." it's more of an incentive. so, before the pandemic, we had a shared office, so i'd be in the office every single day and not necessarily getting things done the best way, just sort of killing time. whereas then when i came... moved into working here two days a week, i felt like that time was spent. . . more flexible and then focusing on what i needed to get done. like stuart, 26% of people in britain hybrid—work — a mixture of going into their workplace,

often for two or three days a week, and working remotely the rest of the time from home — or even the golf course. 13% of people never travel into work, working completely from home, while 41% of employees still commute to work for every shift. nicholas bloom has spent 20 years researching working from home. he's written eight studies since the pandemic. so, we've polled tens of thousands of people in the uk, the us, across europe, and they say they are valuing working from home two, three days a week as the same as an 8% pay increase, because it saves you a huge amount of time. it saves the typical person about an hour and a half a day, from getting ready and going into work, you know, it's more pleasant for many people to work from home two, three days a week. morning.

hello. hospital records is an independent music label in london. i can't help but have this nagging feeling that sort of continual remote working has affected our bottom line. chris is introducing a new policy. all his staff have to come into the office for three days a week rather than two... you want a handshake? yeah. needed that. you did? yeah. ..and all at the same time — tuesday to thursday. i want us to do that together. i don't want it to be, you know, isolated and kind of fractured, 'cause if it's fractured, then it won't work. it felt as though we were doing so much of our communication through a screen. i continually found that frustrating. you know, i firmly believe that the music industry is all about relationships. and so the one single way to really, for any of us, to be able to build those kind of meaningful relationships

is to do it in person. music plays maya, the label's marketing manager, is running their networking event for female djs. music plays being able to be in the office around kind of like all my colleagues and stuff, it'sjust obviously more inspiring and i get a lot more done. so i personally think the ratio is great. is it important to you that you can go into the office because you're actually going to learn from people by being there? i mean, there's a lot of kind of people in my team that are a lot more further along in their career as well for me, so if i need help with something, you know, then i canjust ask them there and then — like, go for a coffee, have a meeting in person, have a chat about it. let's say you get a new boss and they decide that you have to come in five days a week. what would you say to them? i wouldn't be able to be in the office five days a week because i... my social battery drains and i need to sometimes bejust

at home and just like...to smash out loads of admin, for example, and just, you know, be on my own. and i get a lot done, because in the office there's a lot of distractions. chris believes for his young staff, coming into work is valuable. for some of them, it's probably their first full—time job in any sort of working environment that wasn't their kitchen or their bedroom. and i've seen how young people develop and build and learn incredible skills and come outside of themselves. you know, late teens, early 20s, i would probably go into the office at least four days a week. why? you know, because, a, you're going to get... it's much easier to get mentored. to ask questions to the person sitting next to you and just watch and silently learn from others. and, of course, it's more social. what you tend to see is, as people go into their late 20s and particularly their 30s, that mentoring tapers off a bit. it never goes away — we're still always learning — but it slows down and other

priorities kick in. lots of employers offer hybrid working. the bbc, for example, says hybrid working is offered for some specific roles, depending on the work required, and those staff are expected to come into the office two to three days a week. and the government is about to take things further. it says its new employment rights bill will make it harder for employers to turn down requests to work from home. well, we think it's important people have the choice and the right to be able to ask to work flexibly. that can include working from home, it can include a lot of other arrangements. and we know that for lots of people, particularly those with caring arrangements, actually the opportunity to work flexibly really makes a difference for them. what difference will the bill have that's going through parliament at the moment for people who want to work from home? well, it will change the current tests that

are applied in terms of when someone makes a flexible working application, so that employers have to give proper reasons now if they're going to refuse a request for flexible working. but some businesses are pushing back against staff working from home. a new survey found that 80% of employers had a policy telling staff how many days they had to come into the office. 36% of them required their staff in five days a week. household names like boots, sports direct, and amazon have asked their head office staff to come in every day. we are creating a whole generation, and probably a generation beyond that, of people who are used to actually not doing what i call proper work. conservative peer stuart rose used to run marks & spencer and until recently was chairman of asda.

i believe that productivity is less good if you work from home. i believe that your personal development suffers, that you are not going to develop as well as you might if you've been in the workplace as long as i have. and i think, lastly, there is a connection, a correlation, yet to be proven no doubt, but between people's. .. or the current state of mental health of, particularly, young people, and the fact that the number of people who are working away from a workplace, i think it's bad. but what about people with young kids who need that flexibility? people who drive trains have to go to work. people who work in operating theatres have to go to work. people who work in service industries like retail have to go to work, and others don't. well, you know, what's different? they have children. they have problems. they have issues. you deal with it. working from home is becoming a major battleground in the so—called culture wars. the whole sort of work—from—home thing — it's like the people that come fix your house, they can't work from home, but you can?!

does that seem morally right? please don't tell me that everybody who's working from home is working as hard as those who... when they used to come into the office. a new study reveals that - working from home increases the risk of being _ overweight and depressed. in other news, the pope has catholic leanings. and bears do toilet in wooded areas. l some staff who work from home are fighting back. i'm in barry island in south wales. it's notjust the home of gavin and stacey. # tell me tomorrow # i'll wait by the window for you # ed lives here too. he works for the office for national statistics and is a rep for the pcs trade union. do you need to go into the office?

for what i do personally? very rarely. the work that i do is pretty much entirely virtual. so a lot of the it work that i do is on things that don't exist. you don't pick them up and move them. they are based in the ether, out in the internet somewhere. we are going to school. since the pandemic, ed says he's mainly worked remotely from home rather than go to the office in newport. it's just far easier to be able to wake up and get the children to school and nursery and then come back and start work fresh, get my best quality hours of work done, rather than wasting them spending an hour commuting into the office. in november 2023, every civil servant, including ed, was asked to come into the office two to three days a week. i struggle to see the logic and the argument that's being put forwards to say,

"actually, we need you back in the office." like...we've never been told by senior leaders at the ons that there is a problem with productivity, there's a problem with quality, there's a problem with meeting deadlines. we've not had any of that. if anything, we've been praised so much, across covid and past covid, to the point where we were being told that they wouldn't tell us... they had no plans to tell us where to do our work. for a nurse, there is literally no choice whether they go onto the hospital ward, and their taxes are paying your salary. do you think there's a problem there? the best use of taxpayers' money is whatever can be done within the parameters, the maximum amount of money that you've got to spend, that delivers the best value for the public. now, ed and other union members are taking industrial action. they're refusing to go back into the office

while still doing their work at home. the ons is in talks with the union. if negotiations aren't successful, the union says it will strike. do you feel like you're part of a revolution? definitely, yeah. the ons, as far as i'm aware, is the first government department to lead the charge. we will never see this opportunity again in our lifetimes. we will never see this opportunity again. we have to fight for workers' rights, and i'm proud to do that. i'm really proud to fight for it. the ons says it firmly believes a reasonable level of office attendance is in its best interests, and face—to—face interaction helps to build working relationships, supports collaboration and innovation. other public sector workers have followed suit. some civilian staff at the metropolitan police are also taking industrial action, refusing to go into the office more...

..whilst union members at the land registry are working to rule in protest at being asked to go to the office more. do you think that's enough that civil servants could be working as little as two days a week? well, i haven't had anyone come to me and say that something hasn't happened, or we've had a delay with something because someone's been working from home. in fact, quite the opposite. because there might be taxpayers out there concerned that 40% in the office is not enough. well, there's an assumption underneath that question, isn't there, that people who are working from home aren't doing anything, which i would strongly dispute. the working—from—home revolution is rapidly changing our towns and cities. it's early morning in manchester and stephen hasjust opened his dry cleaner�*s for the day. it's been in the family for decades.

what impact would you say, then, that working from home has had on your business? four years ago, people would come in, like, saying they wanted a suit cleaning they were going for a job interview. plenty of suits and things like that. even workwear. but it's stopped now. they only seem to come in for a wedding or a funeral, but not for work. let me show you the ticket book. we used to go through, pre—covid, three a year, so now i'm only going through one a year. that's how much trade has dropped. trade is down by two—thirds. so that is a really significant loss in income. it is. yeah, yeah. it's estimated a quarter of dry cleaners have closed since the pandemic. stephen doesn't get the appeal of staying at home to work. what do you make of the fact, then, there are people who actually don't want to go into the office, they want to work from home? i think it's a bad thing, because you're not getting involved with everyday, um, banter of...going to work. you're in your pyjamas or you're in your shorts and t—shirt and you're in front of a computer all day and there's no... there's no...

i can't see there being any satisfaction in that. as we work from home more often, office vacancies in cities across the uk have risen. in manchester, they're now at io%. spinningfields is a central hub for business and culture in the city. office vacancies here have also gone up. now they're at 15%. fewer people coming into the office isn't good news for some local business owners. latte? there you go. no worries. enjoy. the community element of what we do is what drives me. basically, this is a space for people to come and interact and make friends. what impact has it had on your business that so many more people are working from home? i think it's had a significant impact over the last couple of years.

post—covid, i think now that a lot more people work from home, they're choosing to do so and having a longer weekend. so then, it's really only tuesday, wednesday, thursday where we've got to make the bulk of our money. it does sound like you think it's a bit selfish. i think it can come across selfish. it can't be healthy to stay at home all the time, and the social anxiety that comes from that. and since covid, i think there's been a bit of a separation. there is almost like a ticking time bomb with everybody where they feel like they can only handle social situations for so long, and then they want to go back into their own little bubble. foraiden, it's reached crunch point. if we don't see consistent trade or a lift in trade coming into the new year, it will just be a matter of time before i decide to close these doors. working from home is one of the reasons the latest figures show food—to—go sales have fallen by 8% compared to before

the pandemic. and what that means is 1.4 billion fewer packets of everything from sandwiches to crisps were sold in britain over the last year. and it's affecting transport, too. we're still not using london underground at pre—pandemic levels as we work from home more. with fare revenues down, the government has had to give transport for london more money. weekday passenger levels have dropped by i7% compared to before the pandemic. monday mornings aren't what they used to be. now tuesday to thursday are the busiest days. today, thursday, is the busiest weekday here at bank underground station, yet there's still a fifth fewer passengers using it than before lockdown. now it's friday, the quietest weekday at this station,

and the number of passengers is onlyjust over half what it was before lockdown. you see what we've called a doughnut effect, so i have to be clear — this is an american doughnut, which is like the circle thing, rather than the british one, where there's jam in the middle. but in terms of what we see across europe and in the us is folks have left city centres and moved out to the suburbs. you can see spending, particularly food and drink, has shifted from city centres out to the suburbs. it's also, interestingly, affected things like office use. so a lot of these things are being converted either to make way for flats and apartments or they're being scrapped. mark stansfield manages a team that analyses the uk's commercial property market. we've come to hyde hotel in london, which opened last year after being converted

from empty offices. what is the national picture? well, there's 121 million square feet of space vacant across the uk. that's nearly double what it was back in 2019. can we put a number on all of this in terms of lost income? well, looking at the additional amount of vacant space added to the market per year since the pandemic began in early 2020, we estimate that there's been £5 billion total lost income. child cries commercial landlords might be losing income, but for parents and others with caring commitments, working from home is often a lifeline. so, i've got two children. my eldest is five now. i found out that he had autism. he has high needs. he knows what his routine is. and when that doesn't get met, he has that meltdown. more? good girl. and then i had my youngest, my daughter,

who is now 17 months... yum—yum. ..and things really took a turn from there. i unfortunately got made redundant when i was due to go back. and since then, i've never been able to find work. no employer is willing to give me the part—time hours i need, or the flexibility of just being 100% work from home. harleen worked in talent acquisition. she's now looking for a 25—hour—a—weekjob working from home to fit around her kids. i want a work—life balance. i want to be present in my children's life. i'm looking for something that allows me to just drop my kids to school, pick them up, pick up my little one from nursery. she says she's been looking for work for six months now. i'm not seeing those jobs advertised. i'm not seeing anything that caters to that flexibility. child cries every day i wake up and i'm thinking i'm living in groundhog day. all i'm doing

is being a mother. i enjoy being a mum, but i want productivity. i start to feel like i'm just being brain dead. ready? let's go. helping more people like harleen to find jobs could expand the workforce, according to professor bloom. i do believe work from home will boost the economy. the boost is coming from more people working because, a, they pay more taxes, which reduces taxes for everyone else. and, b, they produce goods and services. it turns out it's kind of a win—win—win. are you angry?! crowd roars pregnant then screwed is a charity that campaigns to improve working mothers�* rights. 15,000 parents marched across ten cities in the uk to show how angry they were that they hadn't seen reform on flexible working, parental leave or childcare. and these are knackered parents.

what benefits does working from home bring to women? the biggest benefit that we've seen from evidence that's been gathered over the last few years is that it reduces the motherhood penalty. the motherhood penalty is essentially the gender pay gap. for those with caring responsibilities, being able to manage your own time makes a big difference, so being able to cut out your commute times but also be close to where your child is makes a big difference to women. the charity has been campaigning for the government to improve access to flexible working as part of its employment rights bill, which should come into force next year. i am hopeful that this government will make some changes that are desperately needed forfamilies, but i am nervous that the business lobby and those in powerful positions will push back against this, to the point where the radical change that's required won't actually come to fruition. there is concern the pressure coming from business

is leading to it being watered down. well, i don't think that's the case, actually. what we're hearing from a lot of the most progressive businesses is actually they really see the benefits of home working. it certainly helps them improve their recruitment and it also improves retention. hybrid working is becoming the new normal, a compromise between business and employees. but not everyone agrees. can the uk afford to work from home? the answer is i don't believe it can. i mean, this country, in a different context, is in a parlous place. we have regressed in this country, in terms of working practices, productivity and in terms of the country's wellbeing, i think by 20 years in the last four. but does working from home really make workers less productive? people are really concerned about productivity in this country and that the government, if you're not careful, you're going to damage productivity in the process. well, of course, lots of people already work from home. it's just that it's become much more commonplace

in recent years. and that's why the body of evidence is actually beginning to grow now, as, really since the pandemic, there is much more of a strong evidence base. it is supportive of increased productivity. professor bloom's research suggests hybrid working is neither more nor less productive than being in the office five days a week. typically, in the studies for hybrid, you see once they're in about three days a week, you don't get any increase in productivity. so that's ultimately why hybrid has stuck. it's hugely profitable for businesses. employees like it. if they don't, they tend to quit. and productivity is about as good as it is with five days in. but he says working from home all the time can have an effect. with fully remote — this is when you're working from home five days a week — that looks like it can, certainly for certain groups of workers, be quite damaging to productivity. music plays back at hospital records, and it's been a month since the three—day—a—week

policy was brought in. has everyone stuck to the three—day mandate, or have you had to get a bit shirty with people? i haven't had to get shirty. no. to be honest, i mightjust need to remind a few people aboutjust sort of keeping regular hours when they come into the office. but some staff are not so keen on coming in more. that extra day definitely adds a little bit more. i find that i'm more productive, generally, at home. i think two days a week for me, you can kind of get the benefits of being in the office alongside other people. i still think that's really important. you also allow more free time... you know, your own time, a little more freedom outside of that. but can you understand from your boss's perspective? he's paying your wages. he's not interested in your free time. sure, but you know, a happy employee is a motivated and ha rd—working employee. chris is happy with how things

are working for his company. he says it's important for businesses to get the balance right. i'm not talking about your staff. do you think there's a sense of entitlement when it comes to working from home, that it's become a right? yeah. all of a sudden, it seems as though there's a notion that actually everyone should be able to have theirfull—time, fully paid—up, bonus—ridden job from the comfort of their own kitchen. and i just think that's kind of nonsense in so many ways. really, it's simply my conviction that we as a team can do so much more when we're together. and that's my privilege, because i'm the boss and i built this up. working from home has transformed how and where we work. it's shifted the balance of power between workers and their bosses. now some businesses are pushing back. the future of working from home is far from settled.

live from london, this is bbc news. president trump says he'd

like arab nations to take in a million and a half gazans, calling the strip "a demolition site" where "something needs to happen". i would like egypt and jordan to take people, you are talking about probably 1.5 million people and we just clean up that whole thing. these are live pictures from gaza — where israel is continuing to stop tens of thousands of palestinians returning to the north of the strip after accusing hamas of a second ceasefire violation. chancellor rachel reeves hints a third runway at london's heathrow airport could get government support — as part of plans to grow the economy. hello, i'm rajini vaidyanthan. president trump says he'd like to see

a—million—and—a—half of gaza's residents taken in