IN Brief:
- ONS survey data puts transport and storage’s planned increased homeworking at 4.4% in February 2026.
- Parcelhero says the figure fell from 14.6% in November 2025, leaving the sector lowest across UK industries.
- The company warns flexibility retreat could worsen skills pinch points in office-based roles.
The share of UK transport and storage businesses planning increased homeworking as a permanent part of their model has fallen to 4.4%, the lowest level recorded across any sector in the latest Office for National Statistics Business Insights Survey.
Parcel delivery specialist Parcelhero, which tracks the survey results, said the decline has been abrupt. “Willingness to accept increased homeworking has plummeted in recent months in the transport & storage sector,” said David Jinks M.I.L.T., head of consumer research at Parcelhero. “When last surveyed, in November 2025, 14.6% of transport & storage firms still embraced increased homeworking. By February 2026, when this latest survey was held, this had fallen by around 10 percentage points.”
The contraction leaves transport and storage out of step with several adjacent sectors that have retained higher levels of hybrid adoption. Parcelhero highlighted that 16.2% of manufacturers and 14.9% of retailers still report increased homeworking, while accommodation and food services stands at 5.8%. Information and communication remains the outlier, at 40.6%.
Operational realities explain some of the gap. Transport, warehousing, and parcel networks are anchored to fixed sites and shift-based activity, while customer-facing delivery performance often depends on tightly coordinated, in-person operations teams. Even so, the ONS survey data suggests the retreat is not solely about physical roles, with respondents setting out reasons that go beyond job suitability.
“When asked the reason why their business was not intending to adopt increased homeworking going forward, 83.1% of transport & storage firms said it was not suitable for their company,” Jinks said. He added that the next most common reasons cited by transport and storage respondents were “difficulties managing staff remotely,” followed by concerns over “a negative impact on working culture” and challenges “integrating new staff into the workplace.”
Workforce indicators in the same survey add another layer. Parcelhero noted that only 6.6% of transport and storage businesses reported experiencing a shortage of workers, lower than manufacturing (10.5%) and retail (8%). The headline figure, however, does not remove the operational consequences of shortages where they do exist, particularly in hard-to-fill specialist and support roles.
“There is some evidence that this could be the case,” Jinks said, pointing to survey responses showing trading disruption and service constraints. Parcelhero highlighted that 1.7% of transport and storage businesses said they had paused trading entirely because of worker shortage, 1.8% had paused some aspects of their business, 2.5% had recruited temporary workers to cover the shortage, and 8.6% reported being unable to meet demand because of worker shortages.
Parcelhero’s notes that the risk sits less with drivers and warehouse operatives — where work location is largely fixed — and more with the office-based roles that sit around the operation: administration, customer service, IT, and management functions that are increasingly mobile across sectors. “If more transport & storage sector companies continued to abandon hybrid working, the concern is that there could be a sector-wide skills shortage,” Jinks said. “Looking particularly at administration roles, this means that experienced managers, customer service and IT staff will turn to other industries that offer more flexible practices.”
