Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, only 5% of UK workers predominantly operated from home. As of 8 – 12 July 2020, more than a quarter (27%) of the UK workforce were still working exclusively from home following the country’s lockdown.
Amongst the top 10 occupations determined by the ONS as having the greatest potential for workers to be exclusively working from home – totaling 1.6m individuals – all are skills areas in which the PSC population is highly active. Across these occupations, there were at least 181k self-employed workers engages within them in Q2 2018 (the latest available data) – potentially up to a quarter of the PSC population now subject to a more stringent IR35 review.
Interestingly, should the prevalence of homeworking continue, there is every potential of an increase in ‘outside IR35’ determinations where the onsite presence requirement has been proven to be non-essential – and outputs, rather than time worked, increases in importance.
