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| Even before COVID-19, UK High Streets were in distress. |
Directors: Ayes Amewudah, Marcus Hickman, Noel Hodson, Richard Nissen
Piltdown Lodge, Piltdown, East Sussex, TN22 3XJ
Cell phone: 07957 622545 E-mail: ayes@amuda.co.uk
May 2020
RESURRECT OUR HIGH-STREETS - DISCUSSION PAPER
The current situation:
COVID-19: May 2020. The decline in
people travelling to work and for family or leisure reasons is not yet
calculated but common experience and business statistics indicate that
passenger traffic this month is 80% less that before Covid-19 took hold.
The reports of traffic reducing to
1955 levels indicate a fall from 32 million licenced cars travelling 7,500
miles per annum to about to 4.5 million cars. Similar reductions have occurred
on buses and trains. People are staying at home – and where possible are
working at and from home. (WFH)
From our own statistics of workers
who stay at home and use IT to communicate, prior to the Covid-19 Lockdown
about 4 million worked in this way at home “on any one workday”. Approximately
12.5% of the workforce. Add to that the 80% of new WFH (work-from-home)
workers, and it totals 28.5 million in voluntary or
imposed lockdown. Only 4 to 5 million continue to commute daily.
Many business leaders have commented publicly
on the positive benefits that they have seen, first-hand, as a result of their
employees having to work from home during this lockdown. In particular, the
well documented productivity gains which can be achieved from flexible working.
Employees have been able to
effectively demonstrate to their managers that they can effectively manage the additional
conflicts, which can arise when working at home, and deliver on time.
The current lockdown has also placed
a further strain on the following two challenges which government, local
authorities, town planners and property developers are trying to address:
1. Provide more affordable homes inside
and outside of cities.
2. Restore High Street shopping and
office work.
We see opportunities to collate and
analyse the positives from the current lockdown and use them to rapidly rethink
new ways to address these.
The opportunity
As lockdown lifts, over the coming
weeks, employers will have to meet the additional cost of implementing new
government guidelines to minimise the spread of COVID 19 in the workplace. For
example: It is likely we will see the implementation of one-way stairways, deployment
of automatic hand sanitising dispensers and flexible working hours and staff
rotation. These costs could be minimised with the implementation of better
facilities for employees to live and work locally in a more flexible way or
live closer to the office.
The average space occupied by a
worker is 250 sq. feet. (23.2 sq. metres.) Multiply by 28.5 million WFH workers
= 7,125,000,000 sq. feet or 7.1 Bn sq. ft
(662 million sq. metres). Average family homes plus a telework office
are about 1,200 sq. ft; so, the recently emptied space is equivalent to 6
million home units. This space is already built – requiring conversion to
create homes+offices.
Empty retail property could be
converted into homes (with a home office) and into Telework hubs, which would
have all the additional facilities that employees need to work efficiently away
from their main offices. For example, they should have telephone integration
and reception facilities, meeting rooms, workstations, state of the art video
conferencing suits, postal and courier services mass printing, photocopying and
IT support services. The work-space in these hubs could be rented by businesses
on a per hour, per week or per year basis. Employees could live locally and
work flexibly between their home, local high street hub, or any other high
street hub and their main central office.
Some of the benefits for central government and local authorities:
1. High streets would be rejuvenated, as
a result of the additional homes and the telework hubs – enabling increases in
spending locally.
2. Increased local jobs (building and
maintaining homes – plus eateries) and a greater sense of community.
3. More homes could be provided rapidly
in town centres, through the conversion, using less green belt land.
4. Cleaner air in the towns and cities –
promoting better health.
5. Less commuting and congestion -
Our goal
The International Flexible Working
Association aims to
provide government and local authorities with well-researched proposals that
will enable developers to convert local empty business units into family homes
– with telework offices and telework hubs in High Streets. This will provide
millions of new homes, revive High Streets day and night with families, support
the businesses that remain – and, of equal importance, greatly reduce commuting
and business-travel – and preserving the clean and quiet environment we are all
now aware of, due to the Covid-19 Lockdown.
What we are seeking
The founder members
of The International
Flexible Working Association will apply for government grants to make a public study, to create
partnerships with builders, architects, planners and finance houses, and to put
the economic facts to mortgage companies for the provision of family finance to
buy the converted homes. We have development companies standing by to deliver
action-this-day.
Our credentials
The International Flexible Working Association’s
founder members:
Richard
Nissen invented the concept of the Virtual
Office in the 1990s, set up a consultancy and has lectured on how to implement
working from home and flexible working. Advances in technology have
made this much easier. However, the importance of the human
dimension covering how employees feel and how to manage remote workers to
promote productivity is paramount.
Noel Hodson
– Telework Consultant. – Noel is one of
the pioneers who promoted working at home using advanced telecoms, since 1987.
He wrote The Economics of Telework (Costs & Benefits) BT 1990, and
Teleworking Explained 1992. Noel built and managed a profitable teleworked
organisation of 38 home-offices and sixty people 1980-1990. He carried out many
studies of telework-productivity and co-led a 40-experts EC project, The
European Charter for Telework. He has conducted workshops across Europe and in
America and written Telework Guidelines and Contracts for major employers
including BT, WHO, TfL, and Eversheds.
Marcus Hickman specialises in consumer and employee
research, analysis and strategy. Prior to founding Davies Hickman Partners in
2007 Marcus was MD of The Henley Centre (now Kantar Futures), one of the UK's
leading strategic consultancies, and part of WPP. He has completed many
research and consultancy projects about the intersection of technology with
home, flexible and mobile working including the use of UC, UCAAS, mobile apps
and cloud technologies.
Ayes Amewudah - IT Partner at Rathbone Results - Business
Consultancy. Has successfully developed and implemented strategies which have
turned around the fortunes of Corporates and large SME businesses in the
technology and communications sector. Previously General Manager for BT, he developed
and launched their first portfolio of products and services to enable
businesses to successfully base their employees at home on a full or part-time
basis.
Data used to compile this initial discussion document:
#Pre-Covid: ONS : Of the 32.6 million in
employment, around 1.7 million people reported working mainly from home, with
around 4.0 million working from home in the week prior to being interviewed for
the survey.
#UK road travel falls to 1955
levels as Covid-19 lockdown takes hold
#About 24,000 commercial properties in London that could be
turned into temporary housing or workspaces are lying empty, a report has
found.
#Workers eye a permanent flight
from the office
Appendix
– For further qualification and or quantification as part of the study
Obvious
benefits of lock down
CLEAN AIR – Bringing major health savings.
QUIET STREETS – Bringing major health savings
FEW if any ROAD ACCIDENTS – Bringing major
health benefits.
REWILDING – Eco-benefits are widely reported.
PRODUCTIVITY – All sensible studies from 1992
to date show 10% to 50% increases.
BETTER WORK-LIFE BALANCE – 50% want to continue WFH.
MASSIVE SAVINGS OF FUEL AND VEHICLE IMPORTS.
NEW HOMES – About 3 million new-homes if 50%
remain WFH.
VIGOROUS HIGH STREET ECONOMIES – Due to family
residents.
LOW COMMUTING – Most work at home.
CONVERT THE EMPTY SPACE This work will employ
millions of UK residents.
CHANGE BUSINESS RATES TO DOMESTIC RATES.
Business rate are failing fast.
MORTGAGES FOR THE NEW UNITS. Occupied by
productive workers.
TREAT THE CONVERTED AREAS AS TELEVILLGES.
Pleasant family areas.
INVITE TOP ARCHITECTS & DEVELOPERS. E.g.
Docklands developments.
RESTORE BANK BRANCHES and POST OFFICES –
Village scale
LATEST BROADBAND – Empower and fund BT. Ensure
global reach.
EDUCATE ALL THE WORKERS IN I.T. Empower the
Open University.
CONCLUSION:
The benefits of clean-air and quiet-streets
will be maintained. High Streets will be useful day and night, seven days a
week. The blight of deserted town and city centres after 6pm and massive
commuting crowds, will vanish. The new WFH residents will create and support
local facilities and local commerce.
UPDATE 12th June 2020 IS IT TOO LATE?
COVID-19 USA Banking collapse predicted by The Atlantic magazine:
Tony – Banking crash – as analysed in The Atlantic.
I’m mindful that you early predicted Covid-19 – so, I read the whole CLO
article. Oooo’er – dangerous stuff.
“Some members of Congress will question
whether the Federal Reserve has the authority to buy risky investments to prop
up the financial sector, as it did in 2008. (Dodd-Frank limited the Fed’s
ability to target specific companies, and precluded loans to failing or
insolvent institutions.) Government officials will hold frantic meetings, but
to no avail. The faltering bank will fail, with others lined up behind it.
And then, sometime in the next year, we will all stare
into the financial abyss. At that point, we will be well beyond the scope of
the previous recession, and we will have either exhausted the remedies that
spared the system last time or found that they won’t work this time around.
What then?”
Bank liquidity is so complicated, I can’t take a
view. It needs a big team of very skilled insiders to do the bookkeeping.
But, some major factors (1) I think ultimately it
is a political decision to prop up the system – by printing money. As Obama did
in 2009. Or – to crash the system. Where does Trump stand on that conundrum?
(2) Big USA multinationals hold trillions legally offshore – taxable if/when
repatriated (3) Illegal cash offshore (tax unpaid) is estimated to
be circa $40 trillion +. NB – The article cites $billions of CLO debts owed by
banks to Cayman companies – these are actually US assets if the Gov, chooses to
claim them. It is this massive offshore river of cash seeking safe investment
that has brought global interest rates to near negative levels.
(4) An odd effect of Covid-19 is that consumers
have stopped spending – paid off their loans – and have bank savings e.g. The
average saved from non-commuting is about $10K per annum. Car sales have frozen
– and so have new car-lease borrowings. Bad for GM & Big-Oil; Good for
households. Households have been sustained by soft-loans – furloughed salaries
etc. - as here in the UK. For now, households are cash well-off. Money has
moved from businesses to citizens – but it is still in the system. Like a blood
transfusion it might be made to flow again. I think Covid-19 is a short term
paralyses. “Old” business models will fail – new ones are springing up rapidly.
The Internet users will not wait. These newly rich consumers might be persuaded
to spend/invest rapidly. Or, its back to the 1930s.
In short – I guess Wall Street will only collapse
if the US Gov wants it to.
An added threat to the conservative Brits as
Covid-19 lifts – Is Brexit. All analysts globally, except UK True Brexit
Believers, forecast 15% Sterling devaluation and 8% loss of GDP (7 million lost
jobs). That could freeze the UK for decades. My brokers are looking ahead to try
to pick out the Brexit-Bonanza shares; which UK industries and companies will
boom after 31st December 2020 after a No-Deal. My old colleagues are
proposing RESURRECT
THE HIGH STREETS as a simple, rapid boost for the UK economy. But will
Local Authorities see sense – or gum up the planning – commercial to homes – in
a failed attempt to gouge out Business Rates? History says they will gum it up.
You were right to forecast Covid-19. I hope you are
wrong about another bank meltdown.
Interesting stuff – Thanks
Noel
