There may be bad news for agencies with reliance on office workers who rent – a new survey suggests 10 per cent believe they are never going back to the office in any shape or form.

Research by IT asset disposal firm DSA Connect shows that 10 per cent of office workers – the equivalent of around 1.7m people – say they will not go back into the office even for one day a week when restrictions end while another nine per cent don’t expect to return to the office until next year at the earliest.

Those who do go back are facing massive changes with a third of workers saying their office has been closed permanently or is being reorganised. Half of them say their office has been shut or will shut while the other half say employers are looking for smaller offices.

Government data shows currently around 26 per cent of employees work from home solely while around a quarter of businesses which are still trading say they plan to increase homeworking in the future.

Harry Benham, chairman of DSA Connect, says: “Businesses need to think long and hard about their offices and how they make the most effective use of them in the future.

“Clearly many are already taking the decision to shut offices or move to smaller premises and substantial numbers of staff are not going to return to the office at all.”