Bankers and accountants are among those being summoned back to their offices after the government scrapped its work-from-home guidance in England with immediate effect.
Businesses rushed out memos to staff today after Boris Johnson urged workers, including those in government, to “get back to work”.
Further restrictions – such as mandatory face coverings in public places – will be dropped next week.
Most have chosen to re-adopt the policies they had in place before Christmas, before the government’s Plan B came into force in response to the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, confirmed that it had asked its staff to return to its offices, while bankers at Citigroup were told that they need to be coming in “at least three days a week” from now on.
HSBC staff started going back into the office today and Standard Chartered has asked employees to come in from Monday, although both will continue to let employees work flexibly.
Knight Frank chair Alistair Elliott said the ending of Plan B restrictions was a “relief”. He added: “This time I don’t think there will be a return [to restrictions]. We’ve really got to assume that this is now the point of no return and we can really gear up to get our cities back to life, which is much-needed.”
The prime minister said the country is on a path to “complete normality” as commuters began returning to the office.
After WFH guidance was scrapped this week, National Rail showed a 10% increase in rush-hour travel yesterday compared with last week, with roads in some big cities also increasingly busy.
Network Rail figures showed that 303,000 people used its stations between 6am and 10.30am on Thursday, up 10% on the same time last week. In London, 1.1m people used the Tube before 10am, up 8% on a week ago.
Navigation company TomTom said congestion levels were up on last week, with journeys in London taking 72% longer than on empty roads, up from 66% last week.
In Manchester, congestion levels rose to 63% on Thursday from 56% last week.
However, the data from other cities was largely unchanged.
