Dolphin Living has always targeted its efforts towards a broader definition of key worker. It’s the people who make the City work – chefs, nurses, drivers, social workers, actors, police, restaurateurs, craftspeople, designers – all the people who need to live or work in town to make London a functioning global city. Without these key workers, central London would be unable to provide the essential services that its residents and workers need and depend upon.

Significant proportions of those who Dolphin define as “key workers” earn modest incomes and so are unable to afford to rent or buy a home near to their places of work in central London. 

The current crisis has drawn attention to the need to re-evaluate the terminology around “key worker” and make it relevant to new ways of working and shifted societal expectations.  

The coronavirus pandemic has particularly highlighted the difference between those who are able to switch to working remotely without too much difficulty and those who cannot work from home as they need to serve on the frontline in jobs ranging from healthcare, policing and local councils, to supermarkets, pharmacies and food delivery. 

At the beginning of the current crisis, before the full lockdown, it was alarming to see scenes of crowded tubes and buses as London’s workers travelled across London to their place of work. It served as a reminder that more needs to be done to attract and house key workers in central London rather than expect that they should commute from Zone 6 or beyond. The London weighting in earnings does not always make up for the additional travel time and costs, meaning skilled staff are ‘lost’ to areas with less expensive housing.

In high-value areas, such as central London, restricting affordable provision to social or affordable rent means housing provision delivered through the planning system does not meet the needs of the population. Or put the other way around – to meet the needs of the population in high-value areas, affordable housing provision needs to include housing for key workers for rent and sale at below market prices, as well as the more traditional forms of affordable housing. 

Housing for those on modest incomes has fallen between the two main political parties’ priorities when it comes to affordable housing policy. This can be characterised as the Conservatives targeting homeownership, and Labour focussing on those in acute housing need. Neither position caters for the forgotten market in between – key workers on modest incomes who work in central London, and other high-value areas. 

Dolphin Living provides intermediate rented housing as a steppingstone to homeownership as well as an offer to key workers who might traditionally have sought social housing. We need others to work with us to deliver housing in central London for the key workers who are providing essential services now during the current crisis and who will be critical to the capital’s future recovery.