The former boss of M&S and Asda has said working from home has resulted in a generation of people “not doing proper work”.
Stuart Rose, who was chief executive of M&S for six years until 2011 and then executive chair of its supermarket rival Asda until November last year, claimed that working from home had harmed employee productivity, although it must be hard to stack shelves or operate the till from your sofa. Talking to BBC’s Panorama, Lord Rose said “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.”
Recently, large companies including JP Morgan and Amazon have taken a similar view. Both have instructed staff they must attend work in person five days a week. Citigroup last week said it would spend £1bn to renovate its offices in London as part of the push to get workers back.
Lord Rose, who is a Conservative peer in the House of Lords very much adopts the Tory attitude to working from home. You may recall Jacob Rees-Mogg, business secretary for 49 days in 2022 (under Liz Truss) was a keen advocate of returning to the office. Of course, it hasn’t escaped our notice Jacob is doing a lot more “working from home” having lost his seat in the 2024 election and his new reality TV show (which we have NOT watched!).
If you are sat working at home reading this on your sofa, you may take comfort from the fact Rightmove are expecting the average asking price of houses to increase by 4% in 2025. They are also predicting 1.15million sales this year.
Their data shows that since Boxing Day, the average price of a property coming to market rose by 1.7%, or £5,992, to £366,189. This is the biggest jump in prices at the start of the year since 2020.
Values were still almost £9,000 below May 2024’s all-time record, though, reflecting affordability constraints among some buyers. The number of new properties coming to market was 11% higher than a year earlier while the number of buyers contacting agents about properties for sale since Boxing Day is 9% ahead of last year, and the number of sales being agreed over the same period is up by 11%.
“New sellers have started the year with a bang,” said Colleen Babcock, property expert at Rightmove. “We’ve also seen a strong start to the year in new seller asking prices, though given the higher-than-anticipated seller competition, we would expect this to slow down over the next few months.”
