We agree entirely that the move to working from home is going to require a change in the planning system for housing. Building the smallest new housing in Europe doesn’t make sense when people are to be working and living in the same place. Further, we can imagine that even the most determined Nimby or Banana (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone) could be persuaded that a switch in the built environment from workspaces to living ones is OK.

However:

Proof of widening housing and wealth inequality caused by the pandemic already exists. Price inflation over the past year was driven by owners using savings to get hold of more space, as well as the chancellor’s decision to give buyers a stamp duty holiday (£180bn is estimated to have been added to household savings, with home workers in better paid and professional jobs the least likely to have been laid off or furloughed). Prices of detached homes rose 10% – twice as much as flats – with rural areas seeing the highest rises.

Just for the sake of argument accept that point. The gap between those who own and those who rent is growing and it’s a bad idea. The logical struggle comes here:

More secure and longer tenancies, and a huge increase in the supply of social housing, were desperately needed before; the signs are that ever greater numbers working from home will only intensify that need.

If the thing to be worried about is the divide between owners and renters then why is the solution an expansion of the rental sector?

The correct solution would seem to be freeing the housing market so that houses people wish to live in are built where they wish to live. We can then leave the market to sort out tenancies and size. You know, blow up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors.