Research campaign launched to help people in region ‘boot the commute’

The team behind the Business Wales Enterprise Hub in Wrexham have launched a new research campaign to discover the effect COVID 19 has had on workers across the region.

BootTheCommute.co.uk is a survey to find out what local workers’ commutes usually look like, and how their attitudes have changed during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The survey will help the team learn how people travel to work and how their feelings may have changed, with the results highlighting just how much money, distance and most importantly, time, people are spending on their commute.

The survey will then show how an individual’s trip compares to the rest of the UK, and give some examples of the alternative ways people could spend their time and money.

From the number of weekly shops or barista coffees, they could buy instead, through to entire days off work or even just a few hours more in bed!

The data will be used to analyse how far people typically travel, how happy they are with that commute and, now many of them have had to work remotely, whether or not they want to change it.

Gareth Jones, founder of Town Sq said they hope the data would highlight whether attitudes have changed. Gareth said: “Before lockdown, the average commuter spent 60 minutes a day travelling to and from work.

“The entire country has essentially been giving remote working a pilot test, and many companies and individuals are realising that despite the restrictions, they can still work.

What we are looking to find out is how strong the desire is to keep this change, and whether or not people are interested in the alternatives, like being able to walk to work.

“That’s when we can really start to have interesting conversations about how the wider way we work is changing.

Much of the current conversation is about getting people back into the city centres, so they can bolster those economies.

But what we’re saying is that if you really want to level up our regions you need people living, working and spending in local communities.

Suddenly, talent will stay at home and create the economic ecosystems that can help revive dying high streets, create jobs and save a ton of CO2.”

The survey is now live at bootthecommute.co.uk.

For more information about Town Sq or the Wrexham Enterprise Hub, you can visit www.thetownsquare.co.uk.