Homeworking

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:35 pm on 26 May 2021.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 2:35, 26 May 2021

I was also going to say, another advantage is reduced traffic jams on motorways. But people work in offices because, when everything was paper-based, they had to in order to access data and update files. There has been a movement towards homeworking, with numbers slowly increasing well before the large increase during lockdown. Nine out of 10 employees who worked at home during lockdown would like to continue working at home in some capacity, with around one in two employees wanting to work at home often or all of the time. Homeworking has advantages for employers, as you've outlined, and employees, but it does affect larger towns and city centres by reduction in footfall in those. The question I wanted to ask was: should there be a working from home allowance to cover the costs of people working from home, when they have to pay for electric and gas and other things all day?