RL Symonds offers a solution to the future of working from home, while Malcolm Mckay says consumers have been forgotten by businesses
I agree with your editorial (The Guardian view on working from home: a new social divide, 18 May), but you do not explore the alternative. Someone might be managing international conferences from a laptop in their kitchen, while their partner works downstairs. Two jobs for multinationals run from a small house with two children at home in lockdown – and a dog. Since Covid, this is a familiar situation in thousands of families. A normal working day of at least eight hours is spent in an unhealthy way of working and living.
Meanwhile, employers are profiting by closing offices and squeezing more hours from each homeworker. Online shopping is creating vacant high street premises. This opens the alternative of workspaces. Some exist, privately owned, with rents so high as to prohibit all but the wealthy. We need public workspaces, a mile or two from where most people live, commutable on foot or by bicycle. They need to be large enclosed areas, with multiple screened-off, sound-reduced cubes, containing a decent desk, ergonomic chair, power and ethernet, together with communal and refreshment areas. And, nowadays, good ventilation.
