One year on from the government ditching its work from home policy in England, workers in London appear to be avoiding returning to offices in locations where there is poor F&B and retail provision, according to new analysis of travel data undertaken by CBRE Investment Management and PLACEMAKE.IO.
Analysis of Transport for London data, combined with PLACEMAKE.IO’s ‘office stock density index’, found tube stations in more ‘balanced locations’ where there was a better mix of offices, retail and F&B, tended to be back to pre-pandemic commuter levels, whereas in locations like the City, where there is a higher density of offices and fewer shopping destinations, commuter levels remained low.
The data shows that even in the City at some stations from Tuesday to Thursday passenger flows now exceed pre-pandemic levels, however, these numbers fall heavily on Mondays and Fridays.
David Inskip, EMEA head of research at CBRE Investment Management, said: “We’ve long believed that by leveraging data better decisions can be made in order to generate better investment outcomes. In this case, the data indicates that the greater the density of offices in a particular area, the greater the decline in the numbers of passengers opting to go in each day. As priorities amongst workers have shifted towards spaces with more than just offices, those in real estate need to ensure that office projects deliver more than just a space to work.”
Chlump Chatkupt, CEO at PLACEMAKE.IO, added: “In demonstrating that the Tuesday to Thursday mid-workweek has emerged as the ‘new normal’ working pattern and that return-to-office dynamics can be explained in part by the balance and diversity of uses, our latest research complements and extends the widely covered research conducted by PLACEMAKE.IO and Visitor Insights.”
