Latest news with #remoteworking
The Sun
3 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Remote island minutes from luxury spa and high-end golf course goes on sale for less than the price of a London flat
A BREATHTAKING island is currently on the market for less than the price of a flat in central London. This stunning location offers a serene lifestyle and even has a luxury spa right on its doorstep. 3 3 Whether you want to leave the stressful city life behind altogether or are looking for a balance of both worlds, this property has it all. The lucky owner of this private island can working remotely full-time or they can even make the three-hour trip to London for the occasional in-office day. Located on the extradorinary Lough Erne in the North of Ireland, this 10-acre private island boasts remarkable reviews of the Fermanagh Lakelands. And right now the public is in with the very rare opportunity of calling Long Island, Fermanagh their home. On the market for £395,000, the private island is located just minutes from Enniskillen town by boat. So you can enjoy the serenity of remote island living without being completely cut off from the world. Luxury living And the property is also on the door step of close the luxurious amenities at Lough Erne Golf Resort. Including a Catalina restaurant with a celebration of Irish flavours and an Ireland-meets-Thailand-inspired spa, this resort has welcomed some massive names over the years. The five-star hospitality venue even hosted the 39th G8 Summit in 2013. But perhaps most notably, it is home to an incredible 36-hole golf course played by sporting great's including Ireland's own Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington. Remote island recruiting teacher for 'world's easiest job' at tiny school with just FOUR pupils - but there's a catch Property potential This private island comes with a detached house, multi-berth marina, private jetty, cleared lawns, woodland area and lakeside views. And there's also development potential for those with the vision and any money leftover. Long Island has a green light for construction, with a Certificate of Lawfulness of Existing Use or Development. The agent has visualised the kind of property that could potentially replace the current residence, showing renderings of a contemporary and minimalist "cabin". This space would is even complete with an expansive entertaining area similar to what you might find in the Hamptons. 5 Tips to Get on The Property Ladder Saving for your first property is tough, but it is possible. Here are a few steps for first-time buyers. 1. Cut back on luxuries and start saving Consistent monthly saving is the best way to accumulate enough money to get on the ladder, for a deposit and purchase fees. To do this, you need to take a look at your monthly outgoings and think about what can be cut out - holidays, new clothes, weekly takeaway. Using a savings calculator can help you to establish how long you will need to save for a deposit. Based on your income, you can figure out a realistic amount to save each month. 2. Have a realistic property search Set a budget for the property price you would like to buy, and think realistically about the location and size of your property. While we all may want that house with a view or extra bedroom, can you afford it? 3. Research Help To Buy and Shared Ownership schemes The government has introduced a few ways to help first-time-buyers get on the property ladder and they're great for those on lower incomes or to buy a property in more expensive areas like London. 4. Consider buying with another person Investing with somebody else you know is a sure way to get onto the property ladder. You only need to save half the amount you would otherwise, so you can work towards getting your property sooner. You can invest with a friend, family or partner. Naturally, it is a big step and a huge commitment so be open and honest about what you expect from living together — if you haven't already. 5. Talk to a mortgage broker and get your documents in order A mortgage broker can tell you exactly how much you can borrow for a mortgage, what you will need to pay monthly and in upfront costs. The current residents have owned the island since 1978, using it as a second home. And if you have a passion for watersports waterskiing, rowing and wakeboarding are particularly popular pastimes in the area. And with plane and ferry options between, the North of Ireland and the UK, commuting is becoming an increasingly popular option for workers. 'There has been a considerable increase in people moving home from London since Covid,' Claire Graham, director at Henry Graham, which specialises in sales and lettings, told the Standard. 'In many cases, that's because those still employed in London are now able to work remotely, while others are realising they can get much more for their money over here and a better standard of living when compared to the sky-high property prices and the cost of living in the capital." Derry Airport, located just 90 minutes from Enniskillen, offers regular flights to Heathrow. These flights take roughly the same amount of time as the drive, making your journey around three hours. If you're interested in owning your own slice of paradise, Long Island in Lower Lough Erne is for sale through Colliers New Homes. More on island living Or you can opt for a UK island home to dolphins, panoramic cliff views, and salmon fishing. Another breathtaking island with three beaches, stunning views, and seals is currently for sale. And a secret UK island with its own castle has hit the market for first time in 80 years Plus, a party island loved by Stormzy and Rihanna also went on sale for £25 million earlier this year. Scottish island with an "unspoilt" white sand beach is on sale for cheaper than a Glasgow home. 3
Telegraph
28-07-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
NHS England spends £15k a week on train tickets for staff
Britain's biggest quango is spending almost £850k a year on taxpayer-funded train tickets for staff, figures show. Office workers for NHS England forked out more than £15,000 a week ferrying staff between its two offices in London and Leeds. In total, the train fares cost taxpayers £846,686 in the year to April 2024, NHS figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request revealed. This represents a 70pc rise compared to 2022-23 when the bill was £500,256. It showed that NHS England staff were regularly travelling by train for two hours and 30 minutes between the two cities for meetings and conferences, despite a rise in remote working and video conferencing. In one case, managers approved a return ticket worth £432.50, which was paid for by the taxpayer. John O'Connell, of the lobby group the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'It's staggering that an NHS quango is blowing more than £15,000 a week on train tickets while ordinary Britons are being told to tighten their belts. 'With remote working and video calls now the norm, there's no excuse for this level of face-to-face travel, especially at such eye-watering prices. 'Ministers must ensure these bloated expenses are brought firmly under control.' NHS England bought 5,337 single and return tickets between Leeds and London for staff last year, according to the data. This means there were more than 100 journeys every week, with the average ticket costing over £150. Earlier this year, the Government revealed it was abolishing NHS England to cut bureaucracy and divert money to frontline services. Announcing the decision, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said the budget for NHS England staff and admin alone had soared to £2bn, and that taxpayers were 'paying more, but getting less'. The process is expected to take over two years, and it is suspected that many of the staff will end up still being employed within the NHS. In total, the quango's train ticket expenses bill rose almost 70pc in the past year from £4.7m to £7.9m. Its travel bill, covering all forms of transport, increased to almost £10m, with £1.5m reimbursing staff for motoring expenses. An NHS England spokesman said: 'Given that our staff run a national health service, travel between sites is necessary to ensure effective co-ordination, but this should only be undertaken in line with our strict internal processes and government guidance. 'The number of flights taken by staff has almost halved in 2024-25 compared to 2023-24 following the introduction of the Flight Approval Panel, so that we continue to ensure every penny of taxpayers' money is spent wisely.'
Irish Times
22-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
AIB calls hybrid-eligible staff into office three days a week
AIB has moved to require staff eligible for hybrid working to return to its branches and offices three days a week on a phased basis, introducing the tightest rules among Irish retail banks. The new regime will take full effect from the start of 2026, a spokesman said. AIB had more than 10,400 employees at the end of last year. The group commenced a hybrid working model in early 2022, where the number of office days depend on the role. AIB, led by chief executive Colin Hunt, said earlier this year that hybrid-eligible employees were expected to be in the office for at least two days a week, though some, such as branch staff, have had to be in the workplace five days a week. READ MORE The Financial Services Union (FSU) has criticised the decision. 'The FSU are conscious not all employees in AIB can avail of remote working but for those who can this is a backward step for a bank that consistently attempts to pride itself on being a family friendly employer,' the union's general secretary John O'Connell. 'The bank have given no rationale for this change. There is no justification for this change and the decision should be revisited with any possible change fully reflective of the views of staff.' This announcement comes shortly after AIB main competitor Bank of Ireland mandated its workforce to return to the office a minimum of eight days a month. AIB's plan is in line with an emerging practice in the UK. Barclays ordered staff back into the office for a minimum of three day a week earlier this year. HSBC is also reported to be considering doing the same. However, it stops short of the approach adopted by Wall Street banks, including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, which have demanded that all staff go to the office five days a week. The AIB spokesman said that the group believes that all staff benefit from spending time working with their colleagues. 'This enables greater collaboration, connection and innovation that supports our customers, the economy and communities in achieving future success,' he said. 'We also recognise the benefits of structured, hybrid working and are committed to enabling it. The extent to which work can be completed in-office or remotely varies depending on the needs of our customers and our business.' PTSB, the smallest of the three domestic banks, previously said that most of its staff are in the office for a minimum of two days a week, though arrangements are set by individual teams.
Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Lord Hermer's departments spent £1m to help staff work from home
Government departments headed by Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, have spent more than £1m on equipment to enable their staff to work from home, figures reveal. The information, released by the Attorney General's Office in response to parliamentary questions tabled by a former Tory cabinet minister, show that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the Government Legal Department (GLD), and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) spent at least £1.24m over the past three years on remote-working equipment. As a whole, government agencies linked to seven Whitehall departments have spent around £3m on monitors, desks and other equipment, despite a ministerial push for public sector workers to return to the office. Other big spenders included the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) – a public body sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions – which spent £955,099 since 2022/23. Lord Hermer has been in charge of the legal departments since being appointed when Labour took power last July, and the figures also cover the previous two years of Tory government. Sir Stephen Timms, the social security minister, claimed the high cost of remote-working equipment 'mainly relates to provision of equipment for new starters, and HSE has increased its staff numbers in this period mainly due to becoming the building safety regulator'. Shimeon Lee, a policy analyst at the TaxPayers' Alliance, told The Telegraph: 'Taxpayers will be dismayed to know that we are still investing in a work from home culture. Remote working has become the norm in the public sector, with little regard for productivity, accountability or value for money. 'While families grapple with squeezed services and sky-high taxes, officials are kitting out home offices at their expense. Ministers must get a grip and put the public back at the heart of public service.' The figures were revealed in a series of written parliamentary questions tabled by Sir John Hayes, a former Tory Cabinet minister. Sir John Hayes, the former minister who tabled the questions, told The Telegraph: 'Productivity has dipped in recent times and never recovered to its pre-Covid levels. It's probably the greatest macroeconomic challenge facing this Government. Unless it improves, it will stymie economic performance. 'The assumption that if you spend more and put more people into systems, you will get better outputs, ignores how productive they are. Remote working will further limit productivity and may make things worse. 'People work best when they are with others. The interactions between individuals inspire creativity and productivity. To deny that is to deny the fundamentals of effective working.' Whitehall has set 60pc office working minimum Last year, Whitehall chiefs agreed that 60 per cent office attendance – three days a week – was the minimum expected of staff. Many public bodies, including the CPS and Ofgem, only have a 40 per cent, or two days a week, requirement to work from an official building. Meanwhile, Ofgem, the UK's independent energy regulator, spent £396,486.26 on equipment to help staff work from home. Last year, The Telegraph revealed that the regulator was paying £3.5m a year for its luxury Canary Wharf offices despite seven out of eight of its employees working from home on a typical day. Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy minister, said the total spent on working from home equipment for government departments 'reflected an increased headcount to deliver additional remit for key government priorities, and steps to reduce its London office footprint to save money'.
Times
12-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- Times
I moved to Lisbon for the perfect life. Of course, it didn't work
'You know we're happy, right?' I was folding socks inside the London flat my partner and I had just bought, in what is a well-regarded miracle, without parental help. 'Everything is sort of perfect.' We'd just painted the bedroom walls olive, settled the disagreement on which cutlery set to buy and I'd successfully coaxed green shoots from a balcony herb garden I knew I could never maintain. There was this sense we'd just blossomed. I'd clawed my way back from severe burnout, having to leave my job after six months of not being able to work, and it had put immense emotional strain on our relationship. But I was feeling myself again, or maybe a new, softer version: rooted, comfortable. My new literary agency was off the ground and doing well. My sister lived at the end of my street and I was surrounded by the network I'd accumulated since moving to London when I was 18. 'But that's why we need to leave,' Mark said with the kind of soft finality he uses when wanting to make a radical suggestion sound reasonable. 'We're comfortable. This is the time to shake things up.' If happiness is something we can't stop striving for, satisfaction is something we are suspicious of. I'd often assumed people leave a city because they're itchy, restless or something is 'missing'. We left when everything was working. Not out of desperation or dissatisfaction, rather from a place of fullness. Remote working as a trend continues to grow: estimating numbers is difficult, but one puts the global population of digital nomads at 35 million — if this community were a country it would rank 43rd by population size, not far behind Morocco and Poland. In the UK polling this year found that 7 per cent of adults think they are 'very likely to work as a digital nomad' in the next three years, a desire fuelled by post-pandemic flexibility, lifestyle inflation and a cultural rebranding of escape as empowerment. • How I became a digital nomad at 65 But there's something unnerving about reaching the top of your own mountain, especially when you've spent your life climbing. Comfort, as it turns out, can be its own form of friction. It presses up against the part of you conditioned to chase. The part that believes ease must be earned, and rest is only temporary. At the time Mark had a photography book to shoot — tennis courts across Europe — and I was writing my second novel and struggling to find the kind of stillness finishing it required. We moved to Lisbon two months later, in summer 2022. Trading in London's brilliant churn for warmth, quiet and the romance of a fresh start. The lifestyle propaganda was compelling; a sun-drenched ode to grilled sardines and terracotta rooftops, low taxes with writing-from-the-beach levels of freedom. It was a place where things moved more slowly and the sea was visible from yellow tram windows. It wasn't false advertising either. Lisbon delivered on all counts, and the friends we made surpassed even our most hopeful expectations. It was perfection. Slow walks around Estrela park, an after-work 'imperial' at a sunlit kiosk, endless beaches to discover and nature on tap. We even invested in a camper van: who were we? Two adults on the slippery side of youth with no dependents or bosses to hold us back. Of course, sorting my visa, relocating the dog and finding somewhere to live threw up its own problems. But we were entering a new golden age, dipping our toes into the expanse of what was possible — and I've got to tell you, the cold, rumbunctious Atlantic felt good. Until it didn't, and something started to shift. Because here's the thing about 'perfection': it's nothing if not a moving target. Recently shortlisted for the International Booker prize, Vincenzo Latronico's book Perfection is creating a lot of waves, especially among digital nomads. The novel follows a couple living their curated dream life in Berlin. They have a stylish apartment, progressive values, digital freedom, late-night parties to attend — and yet they're disillusioned, bored. 'We had perfected everything we could. There was nothing more to arrange, improve, renovate. And that, maybe, was the problem.' Still, they feel the need to move on. Their existence in Berlin reveals itself as merely a tapestry of Instagrammable moments — their home a curated backdrop for a life they can't be sure they chose — and beneath the surface of it all lies this profound sense of dissatisfaction. Moving to Lisbon and then Sicily, they become lost in their pursuit as they struggle to locate what it is they are truly searching for. This book has sparked real questions within me, and the remote-working community I've found in Portugal. After all, we are a generation caught between the pursuit of individuality and the homogenisation brought about by globalisation and digital culture. One of the outcomes of this is a need to optimise our lives to reach so-called perfection. If the boomers were 'keeping up with the Joneses' next door, every person we follow on social media has become a Jones. For the boomer generation, for instance, there was one 'perfect' room in the house, kept intact, used at Christmas to open presents or when important guests came over. Millennials, however, seem to have been engulfed by this performance of perfection, smearing it across every facet of their lives. But if we keep renovating for the future we want to live in, we will never fully appreciate all that's remarkable in our present. And in this relentless pursuit of the ideal, remote work becomes a new badge of success: a marker of flexibility, autonomy, even enlightenment. It promises a life beyond the commute, beyond the grind. A kind of curated liberation. But it's worth asking: are we moving forward or simply shifting the scenery around an unchanged self? After two and a half years of living in Lisbon, it's impossible to ignore the privileged, immigrant bubble I float in. But if we look at the digital nomad life honestly, there is a kind of weightlessness to it, a sense that you might not truly land. One friend, contemplating relocating her family back to the UK after living remotely for seven years, describes the sensation: 'I feel like a skipping stone here where, however much I try, I can never drop deep enough.' To live abroad is to live on the edge of belonging — grateful, sometimes enchanted, but never fully anchored. 'Of course the language barrier is an issue, even if you're committed enough to learn,' she continues. 'Access to simple institutions like education, healthcare or even the act of volunteering is kept behind higher walls in a culture or place that doesn't belong to you.' And then there's the lingering question of when or if you are 'coming home' — asked by everyone, at every turn. • The luxury apartments for digital nomads … in London I've long been puzzled by the way we speak of 'home' as if it must exist in the singular — as though a life, in all its phases and pluralities, could be anchored to just one place. Wales, where I was born, holds the deep-seated rhythms of origin. London, where I spent 15 years building a self, carries the architecture of ambition and community. And Lisbon, once a romantic abstraction, is slowly shedding its holiday sheen, becoming something weightier, something with the contours of home. Success for me became measured in freedom and the 'new'. But there is no comfort in what is new. And the freedom of remote working has turned out to be a prettier version of life's standard pressures. Last week I viewed a community-led office space with a knowing grin: it would come freshly packaged with an underground commute. Something I'd strived so hard to work out of my life. But I am craving something, and I think that's the tangible physicality of life and regular human connection. When the buzz of reinvention wears off. When the beach loses its sheen. When that same whisper returns: is this it? You realise the real story isn't about finding the perfect place to escape to, it's about what happens when you stop trying to outrun your own desire. When you stop curating and start confronting. I've stopped planting seeds for a life that might one day feel good. I'm sitting in the one I have, even when the sun doesn't shine. Especially then. What we need isn't a new location but a new literacy for contentment. Because maybe peace isn't found in the next city, or job, or flat with better lighting, even though the internet is insistent on making us feel like it does. Maybe peace is learning to stay when things are good, and not always seek out 'better'. Selfish Girls by Abigail Bergstrom (Hodder & Stoughton £20 pp272). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
