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17 April 2020updated 06 Oct 2020 9:45am

Transport secretary predicts more home working after pandemic

By Samuel Horti

The coronavirus crisis has shown businesses that home working is more efficient than previously thought, the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said.

Firms will ask more staff than usual to work from home after the pandemic is over, he predicted. “Well, talking to business leaders like the Northern Powerhouse for example, we were commenting on the extent to which the world probably will not go back to the way it was before in all manner of ways,” he said.

“It may well be that in future companies say, actually it has worked pretty well having some of our staff working from remote locations, why don’t we carry on doing that?”

More home working would ease rush hour travel, he said, and the government will think about how it can better “spread the load” of transport over the day.

“We should look, as we think about the future, for lessons that we can take away that actually might change the way we can live life in the future a bit for the better.”

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