Working from home: Lords Home-based Working Committee report

Approximate read time: 13 minutes

On 10 June 2026, the House of Lords is scheduled to debate the House of Lords Home-based Working Committee report ‘Is working from home working?’ (13 November 2025, HL Paper 196 of session 2024–26).

1. Findings and recommendations

In its report the committee highlighted how the Covid-19 pandemic led millions of office workers to work from home for the first time. It argued this significantly accelerated a pre-existing “modest and gradual shift” to home working, causing it to become mainstream for many office workers.^[1] The committee quoted figures from the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) April–June 2025 opinions and lifestyle survey which estimated that 13% of working adults in Great Britain now worked from home all of the time, with an additional 26% working from home some of the time (an arrangement called hybrid working). The committee also observed the UK was now estimated to have one of the highest rates of home working globally.

The committee explored the issue of homeworking across a range of areas, including:

• wellbeing and health effects on individuals
• practical effects on individuals
• productivity
• effects on employers
• employer-worker relations
• technology

The committee said one of its key findings was that home working could support the government’s plans to get people back into work by allowing individuals to work who otherwise might not be able to.^[2] The committee noted its other findings included:

• hybrid working can be the “best of both worlds” compared to fully remote or in-person work, but only if done well
• not everyone can work from home and access to it is unequal, with levels higher among professionals, university graduates, and those living in London
• many return-to-office mandates amount to formalising hybrid working, rather than a return to full-time office attendance
• remote and hybrid working can help employers with recruitment and retention, but can present challenges for collaboration and management
• changes to flexible working requests under the government’s Employment Rights Bill [now the Employment Rights Act 2025] could risk “years of litigation” at employment tribunals, unless the legislation is defined clearly and effectively
• there is no “one-size-fits all” answer to the question of working from home and productivity^[3]

The committee’s report included a number of recommendations. The committee highlighted several of those directed at the government in the press release accompanying its report. These were that the government should:

• set out whether remote and hybrid working are being considered as part of existing initiatives to support people with disabilities and long-term health conditions back into work
• promote and incentivise employer investment in management training to support effective remote and hybrid working, including by reconsidering its proposed cuts to apprenticeship programmes focused on leadership skills
• review the relationship between its 60% office attendance policy for civil servants and cuts to government office space
• avoid major further regulation or legislation on home working, but publish updated guidance to help employers
• implement its changes to flexible working requests under the Employment Rights Bill [now the Employment Rights Act 2025] in a way that considers the impact on employment tribunals
• assign ministerial responsibility for the gathering of more detailed data on remote and hybrid working^[4]

2. Government response

The government’s published its response to the committee’s report in February 2026.^[5] The response set out both the government’s policy approaches to flexible working and its response to each of the committee’s recommendations.

The government argued that remote working presented benefits for both employers and employees, but adjustments were continuing post-pandemic:

We are beginning to see a clearer picture of what home and hybrid working looks like beyond the constraints of a public health emergency, though we expect to see continued adaptation. The government views businesses’ decisions to retain elements of remote working as a reflection of the value that flexibility offers both employers and employees.^[6]

The government also said this flexibility played a “pivotal role in supporting people to balance their jobs alongside their personal needs and responsibilities”. The government referenced its ‘Plan to make work pay’ and provisions in the Employment Rights Act 2025 that would “make it more likely that flexible working requests are accepted”.^[7]

The government set out that it did not wish to specify which forms of flexible working should be used by businesses:

The government is not prescriptive about the specific arrangements that employers and employees agree; what matters is that the approach works for both parties. For those facing barriers to employment, flexible working can be essential in helping people enter and remain in work, but the types of flexibility people need will be dependent on their individual circumstances. As such, the government is committed to ensuring that more people can access the flexibility they need, whether that is remote work or other forms of flexibility.^[8]

The government referenced the committee’s report, saying that it had identified far-reaching effects of the move towards more home working. The government said that impacts from this trend extended into areas including transport, housing and health. It said it was “mindful of these effects, and recognises the importance of understanding them and responding appropriately”.^[9]

The government set out how it was going to address these issues:

In response, the government will take forward a number of priority actions, including strengthening cross-government research and analysis efforts, and exploring how best to target information and advice to line managers. In addition, as we move into the next phase of delivering the ‘Plan to make work pay’, we will look to establish a more structured, official-led stakeholder group. This group, which will bring together key stakeholders and business leaders, will advise and support implementation, while helping the government drive culture change and shift narratives around flexible working.^[10]

The government also responded to the committee’s recommendations, including in the following areas:

• On the committee’s recommendations on remote and hybrid working being used to support people with disabilities back into work, the government affirmed its commitment to enabling people with disabilities to work effectively from home.^[11] The government described home working as a “free adjustment” that could be used by employers to ensure someone with disabilities could work for them. Specifically referencing the ‘Access to work’ government grant scheme, the government said that because the scheme applied to any workplace, including the home, it could be used to support disabled people in working effectively under remote or hybrid arrangements. This included supporting workers with specialist equipment and assistive technology when working at home. The government argued there was a strong case to update the role ‘Access to work’ played in making work accessible for disabled people because it had not been substantially changed since it was introduced in 1994. The response referenced the government’s ‘Pathways to work’ green paper from March 2025. It said the paper launched a consultation to inform the future direction of the ‘Access to work’ scheme. The government said it was considering responses to the consultation and would set out its plans in due course.^[12]
• On incentivising employer investment in management training to support effective remote and hybrid working, the government said that some support and training was already available, including its ‘Help to grow: Management programme’.^[13] The committee said its recommendation included reconsidering the government’s changes to apprenticeship programmes focused on leadership skills. In its response, the government defended its changes to level 7 apprenticeship programmes, stating that apprenticeship starts of people under 25 had fallen by 40% over the last 10 years.^[14] It said it wanted to target support at people at the start of their working lives and was therefore only funding level 7 apprentices under the age of 22 (or under 25 for care leavers or those with an education, health and care plan). However, the government agreed with the committee drawing attention to management capability in supporting flexible working. It said it had launched a consultation on flexible working and one of its core aims was to determine what training, guidance and support would benefit employers.^[15]
• On its office attendance policy for civil servants, the government said that civil service heads of department had “reached a collective decision that 60% minimum time spent working at a government building or on official business offers the best balance for most employees”.^[16] It said that in those cases where departmental headcount exceeded available estate capacity “departments are working closely with the Government Property Agency to ensure that future estate provision is sufficient to support hybrid working with the aim of enabling the 60% attendance minimum”.
• The Employment Rights Act 2025 provides that employers can only reject a request for flexible working when it is “reasonable” to do so. The committee had expressed concern that without a clear and workable definition of the meaning of ‘reasonable’, employment tribunal caseloads could be impacted.^[17] The committee said that as the government worked with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) on producing guidance on the reasonable requirement, “the government and ACAS must consider the implications of different approaches for the employment tribunal caseload”. In its response the government said it did not foresee the measures having a significant impact on tribunal caseloads. It argued that “the measures we are introducing should instead lead to better decision making first time around”.^[18] It said that since 2014, when the right to request flexible working was extended to all employees, “on average there have been 126 cases taken to tribunal per year, which makes up 0.1% of the overall number of employment tribunal cases”.

3. Office for National Statistics response

The Home-based Working Committee also made the following recommendations to the ONS:

• The ONS should start collecting and publishing additional data on variable levels of hybrid working, in particular the number of days worked from home per week by hybrid workers. It should collect this data regularly and over time, to allow trends to be measured.^[19]
• The ONS should continue exploring ways to link employer and employee datasets on productivity. If the ONS lacks the capability to develop this data, the government should stand ready to provide it with the support it needs.^[20]

The ONS responded to the committee on 26 February 2026.^[21] In his letter, Darren Tierney, permanent secretary of the ONS, explained that the ONS collects data on hybrid working through its ‘Opinions and lifestyle survey’ (OPN). In response to the committee’s recommendation on collecting and publishing additional data on variable levels of hybrid working, Darren Tierney said the ONS was:

[…] engaging with the Department for Business and Trade to understand future data needs on hybrid working in the UK and to consider the most appropriate approach for collecting this information. Any continuation or expansion of hybrid working questions on the OPN would require sponsorship from a government department and would be designed so they complement, rather than duplicate, other data on this topic collected across government.

On the committee’s recommendation about linking employer and employee datasets on productivity, Darren Tierney said that the ONS recognised the “significant benefits” a linked employer-employee data infrastructure (LEED) would present “in improving existing core economic statistics and generating new insights to better understand the labour market and productivity”. He said the ONS had developed a work programme to develop LEED. In collaboration with the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, the ONS had published a roadmap on the key features of the LEED development.^[22] Mr Tierney said the ONS was currently implementing a LEED ‘spine’ of employer-employee identity linkages to allow employees and employers to be tracked together over time. The ONS aims to publish a technical note and initial exploratory statistics in the second half of 2026.

4. Read more

• House of Lords Home-based Working Committee, ‘Is working from home working?’, 13 November 2025, HL Paper 196 of session 2024–26; and ‘Working from home could get people back into work’, 13 November 2025
• Department for Business and Trade, ‘Government response to the report of the House of Lords Home-based Working Select Committee’, February 2026, CP 1510
• QSD on ‘Civil servants: Compulsory office attendance’, HL Hansard, 9 January 2025, cols 850–65. See also: House of Lords Library, ‘Office attendance mandate for the civil service’, 6 January 2025
• House of Commons Library, ‘Hybrid working and UK government policy’, 27 November 2025
• Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, ‘The impact of remote and hybrid working on workers and organisations’, 17 October 2022

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