FEWER than one in five people have returned to their workplace in cities across the country, stark research reveals.
‘Freedom Day‘ gave a much-needed boost to struggling pubs, restaurants and nightclubs across the nation, the Centre for Cities found.
Many in the North and Midlands, from Blackpool, Liverpool, and Manchester saw the biggest boosts in trade.
But overall city centre visitor levels are still at just half of pre-Covid levels, in gloomy news for the nation’s inner-city workers.
Just two places – Blackpool and Bournemouth – have recovered to levels seen before Covid hit last March, but this was put down to the tourist summer season.
London, Oxford and Birmingham were still struggling with far lower numbers of visitors than before the virus took hold.
Ministers are growing worried about many millions not returning to their offices, despite lifting the work from order last month.
But unlike last year, they won’t order people to return and instead will leave it up to employers and employees to thrash out a deal.
Thousands of jobs are expected to be lost as the furlough scheme comes to an end next month, and the Universal Credit £20 a week uplift ends too.
Centre for Cities’ Director of Policy and Research Paul Swinney said last night: “It’s a mixed picture as the country takes its next steps back to normality – both for different types of businesses, and for different places.
“People’s eagerness, particularly in cities in the North and Midlands, to go out and socialise has been a lifeline for many businesses in the night-time economy.
“But a reluctance to head back to the office in our largest and most economically important cities means that people in the so-called ‘sandwich economy’ that caters to city centre office workers are facing an uncertain future as we get ever closer to the end of the furlough scheme in September.”
