Commuting to London

Global Cities team
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Introduction

After Covid, the world of London office work split into those workplaces that have fully embraced flexible working, and those that have not. In the latter camp are many of the major Investment Banks, Magic Circle law firms, and consultancies. They require their staff to be in the office most of the time (typically 4+ days a week). Salaries are typically higher in these professions – compensating these employees well for the inconvenience.

In the former camp are most tech firms, data providers, smaller financial service companies, and the public sector. They expect their employees to come into the office on several days each week (typically 2 – 3). Predictably, salaries are set a little lower – with employers able to offer workplace flexibility as a ‘benefit-in-kind’.

This bifurcation in attitudes to work from home has resulted in the emergence of three distinct commuting ‘strategies’:

  • Daily Commuters: Expected to come in on most days, these commuters typically walk or cycle to the office, use TfL public transport if they live within Zone 1 or 2, or are using the National Rail system for shorter daily journeys.

  • Sporadic Commuters: These commuters come in 2 to 3 days a week. They might make use of daily or open return rail tickets, but do not typically overnight in London. Though they might live in London by choice, many have moved to the suburbs.

  • Multi-Day Commuters: These commuters make use of open returns or single tickets to stay several days in London at a stretch, book-ending the weekend with working from home on a Monday and Friday.

For our 10-year anniversary, we decided to apply some science to these commuting patterns to identify some of the best commuting stations to live near for each strategy.

For a full explanation of our methodology, see Methodology & Glossary

Visualising the Results

Use the map below to see the Threshold Salary required to make the purchase of the average property in the area (we use Local Authority average prices from the ONS). We assume buyers are set on buying a certain property type, e.g. a flat, or detached house.

Assumptions

Map Control

Top Stations

Use the table to identify, for a given commuting strategy, target property type and family composition, which stations are best for educational outcomes at the primary, secondary and sixth form stages.

  • Filtering by Gross Income per Earner is optional. An empty table may be returned if the Gross Income per Earner is not large enough to support the lifestyle specified in the assumptions if “Filter Results by Budget” is set to “On”

  • Click on any column header to sort the table by that column

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Our interactive map has been optimised for use exclusively on desktop and tablet devices only.

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