St Albans named among UK’s best places for home working

The UK'’s 10 best places to work from home, according to Uswitch (Image: Archant)

According to the Uswitch remote working index, St Albans is the seventh best place for home working out of 104 of the UK’s biggest towns and cities.

The areas were ranked on seven metrics, including crime rate, air quality, green spaces and number of local GPs.

Harrogate in North Yorkshire topped the list, followed by Bath and North East Somerset.

Other areas of Herts fared less well – Stevenage was in 70th place, followed by Watford in 76th.

More than half of respondents (53 per cent) said that house prices were their most important consideration when choosing a place to live, followed by green spaces (45 per cent), crime rates (43 per cent) and broadband speeds (34 per cent).

Air quality (28 per cent), local GP numbers (20 per cent) and schools (16 per cent) were less of a concern.

Nearly a fifth of respondents (19 per cent) said they want to spend more time working from home once the pandemic is over, while 17 per cent said they have already moved or want to do so due to the benefits of home working.

An increasing preference for a more rural way of life is also apparent: while 23 per cent said they lived in a city of more than 500,000 inhabitants, only 13 wished to do so in the future.

And while just 15 per cent live in a village at present, double that (30 per cent) said they would like to.

Adelana Carty of Uswitch.com, said: “The pandemic has turned our working routines upside down and given many of us a taste for what our lives could be like if we worked from home on a more permanent basis.

“Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in millions of people dreaming of ditching the rat race and moving away from the big city.”