Workers are heading back to offices across the UK in droves, pushing office occupancy to the highest since before the Covid-19 pandemic, as an expert described the numbers as “no longer in freefall nor in recovery mode but settling”.
Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chasehave led the push with strict return-to-office mandates despite anger among many employees about being ordered back to the office five days a week. Companies in other sectors have also increased days in the office but many businesses, including law and accounting firms, still allow staff to work remotely two days a week.
Average office attendance in the UK has been above 40% every week since early January, reaching 44.2% in the week to 13 February, according to Remit Consulting’s ReTurn report. That was the highest since the Covid outbreak in March 2020, which led to the first nationwide lockdown. Attendance dipped to 42.2% in the week to 20 February because of the half-term holiday, and rose to 44.1% the week after.
Office occupancy varied between the nine cities tracked by the consultancy, hitting 69.2% in Bristol in the week to 27 February, 64.6% in Leeds, 63.8% in Cardiff, 53.7% in Edinburgh, 50.7% in Manchester, 42.3% in Birmingham, 41.5% in London, 39.3% in Newcastle upon Tyne and 31.6% in Glasgow.
Lorna Landells, a partner at Remit and a co-author of the report, said: “Office attendance is no longer in freefall nor in recovery mode; it is settling. Employees are more open to being in the office, but only where it feels purposeful and workable. Flexibility is no longer a perk; it is the baseline.”
She said the results of the study showed a shift in focus for occupiers, investors and developers. “The question is no longer whether people will return to the office but what kind of office experience genuinely supports the way people now work. As expectations stabilise, the quality, functionality and clarity of workplace design are set to play an increasingly decisive role in driving attendance,” Landells added.
However, there is sizeable resistance to full-time office working. More than 2,000 of JPMorgan Chase’s 300,000-plus employees worldwide have signed a petition in the year since the bank’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, issued a five-day office working edict in early 2025.
The petition described the mandate as a “great leap backward” that hurt employees, customers, shareholders and the company’s reputation.
It said: “It worsens traffic and pollution while disproportionately pushing out women, caregivers, senior employees, and individuals with disabilities. Many of these are top performers, and many of them only able to join the workforce under hybrid-work rules.”
The petition added that this directly contradicted the bank’s commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion.
One staff member said: “My team is spread out through two continents and three time zones. JPMC is a global company – why can’t that include my home office?”
Another said: “Hybrid is working and employees love the happy medium.”
Average office occupancy in Birmingham and Newcastle had been consistently above 40% in recent weeks, while in Leeds and Cardiff it was even higher, above 60%, Remit data shows. In Bristol, it went as high as 75.4% the final week of January.
The rate in Glasgow had been edging towards 30%, and exceeded that in the latest week after several years of lower office attendance.
It has a high proportion of government and other public-sector workers. During the Covid lockdowns, Glasgow had additional restrictions compared with other parts of Scotland, and there was a slower sustained return to the office than other locations.
The numbers compare with national office occupancy levels of 60% to 80% before the Covid pandemic, when offices were never full because of sickness, holidays, external meetings or other operational issues.
A growing number of companies are committing to large office buildings for the long term. According to the commercial property group CoStar, there were 14 new office lettings for more than 100,000 sq ft (9,290 sq metres) last year – the joint highest since 2017 and twice as many as in 2024. JP Morgan and HSBC each took about 200,000 sq ft after realising they had downsized too much in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The property company Knight Frank has said: “While a move back toward office-first hybrid-working patterns is the norm, occupiers are planning for peak occupancy days and accepting some off-peak inefficiency as the price of having teams together when it matters. A small number of firms are taking a more targeted approach to reducing waste, for example, by closing certain floors on Fridays.”
