Loooong distance commuters

When you think of the commuter belt around London you don’t immediately think of Barcelona, Marrakech and Tallinn.

But a future-gazing report suggests that we could see a new type of commuting – where large numbers of people work in the UK but live overseas.

High house prices, cheap flights, flexible working hours and e-mail and the internet making it easier to work from home are all set to combine to create a new breed of long-distance commuter.

By 2016, there will be 1.5 million people working in the United Kingdom but living overseas, using Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted as commuter terminals – predicts a report from the Future Forum, set up by travel firm Thomson.

So instead of grinding into work on packed commuter trains, people will be looking for a better quality of life in accessible, more affordable overseas cities, working in jobs where they don’t have to be in the office each morning.

BBC News