There are more small businesses today than ever before – due partly to the pandemic a few short years ago that prevented normal industry from running in the ways it always had. We had to move away from a work force that attended the office or industrial unit five or six days a week and just had their five weeks annual leave and bank holidays off. The shock of being constrained and staying at home meant that a lot of folk discovered a love of this new way of logging on from home and generally not having to make the effort to commute. I know of at least one chap locally who drove off to catch his train into the City religiously at 6.15am daily. Suddenly he had to stop. But within hours his high flying finance job was able to be run from his office at home – the office the family had been using for crafts and household management. In fact this chap only attends his office one day per week, generally a Tuesday, because the firm realised they didn’t need all these folk actually in the same place, it could be done literally online with the very specialist software. They removed much of the spare furniture and now colleagues have a rota system of ‘hot desking’. Just so long as they only go in on their alloted day! It has aved the slimline firms money but of course, there is the thorny problem of commercial landlords with acres of office space that is gradually being ‘let go’ by a previously bouyant market.