I have a crude, but broadly reliable, measure of how busy central London is on any given day: the straight line test.
If it is possible to stride along a City pavement without deviation from my selected direction, as I could today on a Monday, then most people have chosen to skip the commute .
If on the other hand, I have to weave, bob and shimmy through the crowds, as I did last Thursday, then it is a fair bet that there are few fellow office drones working from home.
And although the number of non-straight line days have steadily increased over the past two years, there are still plenty of Mondays — and certainly almost every Friday — when it would be feasible to stroll from Holborn Viaduct to Aldgate East and scarcely shift my bearing.
For, as today’s numbers from TfL demonstrate, the bounce back in the number of people commuting into central London appears to have stalled.
Commuter numbers tend to rise in line with economic output so the 1.1% year on year rise is telling, as that is roughly the rate of annual GDP growth. So the underlying pick-up in the propensity to go into the office may now actually be close to zero. This may be as busy as working day central London ever gets.
There are several reasons for this. One is that commuting — particularly from outside the M25, is immensely expensive, and fares are set to rise again in the New Year. Well meaning initiatives from the Mayor and the rail industry to make commuting more attractive or affordable have only tinkered at the edges and not really moved the dial.
Although many private sector employers are gradually turning the screw on staff and making three or four days in the office mandatory, very few outside investment banks and hedge funds are going the whole five day hog.
But for large swathes of the public sector working from home more days than not remains the norm and there is little appetite for changing that despite Jacob Rees Mogg’s passive aggressive “sorry you were out” billet doux issued when he was in the Cabinet.
Can things change? Possibly, but it does feel as if current levels of office occupancy — at around 80% to 85% of pre-pandemic numbers — may now be set in stone. There is a City office block I know where the atrium coffee shop closed down during the pandemic and has still not yet reopened. There just are not enough workers going into the building to make it economically viable. The coffee machine is still there, but there are no signs of anyone getting ready to fire up the De’Longhi anytime soon.
Jonathan Prynn is City Editor
