Exploring Hybrid Work and Childcare

By Naomi Finch

Hybrid working provides parents with flexibility in organising childcare, but at what cost? A new research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation explores the implications.

In this blog we introduce an exciting new cross-disciplinary research programme, Effective hybrid work and childcare, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, that will understand how hybrid workers organise childcare, what influences their decisions and the implications of this. It is led by Naomi Finch at the University of York, in collaboration with Katharina Bader, charities Coram Family and Childcare and Working Families, and research consultant Ivana La Valle.

The Employment Rights Act was passed on 18th December 2025. Flexible working will become the “default” for all workers from 2027, with employers required to say yes to staff requests for flexible working from their first day starting in a job unless they can prove it is “unreasonable”.  Since the pandemic, more employees have moved to a hybrid way of working (a form of flexible work where time is split between office and homeworking), which can be combined with temporal flexibility (adjusting working hours according to employee need). The underlying assumption is that hybrid options will improve work-life balance and wellbeing for parents. However, this is not necessarily the case. The Covid 19 pandemic highlighted that homeworking can lead to work-life conflict, low wellbeing and ill-health, with this effect being more pronounced for mothers than fathers, likely due to the closure of formal childcare. Emerging evidence suggests that parents working hybridly continue to look after children themselves.

Photo by Jep Gambardella

We lack empirical evidence about how hybrid workers organise childcare, what influences their decisions and the implications of this.  Our mixed-methods research will explore current patterns of hybrid work-childcare arrangements; how policy, work and family influence these patterns; and which patterns produce positive outcomes. The research will include a novel survey with 5,000 working parents in England to compare the work and childcare arrangements of hybrid workers with other fully remote and on-site workers. Importantly, it will also provide an opportunity to understand the influence of the 30 hours funded childcare expansion. 

We will publish regular updates on the project website as the programme progresses. 

Hybrid work and work-family balance

The ONS reported that in 2025, 28 percent of workers in Great Britain reported working hybridly (defined as working at home and travelling to work in the last 7 days). This has been steadily increasing since the pandemic, although workers with higher incomes over £50,000 (45 percent), in managerial positions (56 percent) and parents (35 percent) are more likely to work hybridly.

One of the perceived benefits of hybrid work is that it can enable employment to be organised around childcare, leading to better work-family balance, reduced work-family conflict, and higher wellbeing. Hybrid work can facilitate shared parenting, reducing the need for more formal childcare, for example when one parent starts work late to do the school drop-offs and the other ends work early to do the pick-ups, made possible by reduced ‘travel to work’ time. Hybrid employment, when used alongside flexibility in adjusting working hours, can enable work hours to be shifted to meet unpredictable childcare needs – such as when children are ill – or to work around formal childcare hours. It also allows work and childcare to be undertaken simultaneously, so parents can work at home when necessary 

Emerging evidence suggests hybrid workers are using this flexibility to undertake childcare themselves whilst working from home, with reduced need for  formal childcare. The Department for Education 2024 Childcare and Early Years survey of parents shows a post-pandemic decline in take-up of formal childcare, especially for school-aged children. This has also not been replaced with informal childcare, which has also experienced a decline, suggesting that – post pandemic – school age children are more likely to be looked after by their parents at home. 

For pre-school children, headline figures for formal childcare suggest a post-Covid dip that has recovered, although the proportions using informal childcare has declined. Nevertheless, post-pandemic there are concerns amongst providers and local authorities about take-up of pre-school childcare, mainly in relation to a decline in hours. Providers reported that more parents were seeking part-time rather than full-time hours, had less demand for early-bird, afterschool or wraparound places and were reducing top-up of publicly funded hours. These post-pandemic changes will however be hidden from the DFE survey statistics that show only overall take-up of childcare. We do not yet have firm evidence of how hybrid work has affected parental and formal childcare use across England. Our project will explore how far parents working hybridly are looking after children themselves and how this is balanced with other forms of childcare – and different combinations of home versus office work.

Why are parents looking after children themselves whilst working?

An important question for the project is addressing the underlying reason why parents, especially mothers, are looking after children themselves whilst working. There is some evidence that European countries with the highest level of remote work also have the highest childcare costs. In the context of the cost-of-living crisis, high childcare costs are likely to push hybrid working parents to look after children themselves. A recent report by Remote about working parents highlighted how return to office mandates are particularly concerning for parents, with 73% of working parents fearing that their childcare costs would go up further if they were required to work more days in the office. In England, there has been a recent expansion of 30 hours funded childcare to all working families with children from 9 months old which began September 2025 (September 2024 for two-year-olds), which is anticipated to impact parental hybrid work and childcare decisions. But there are limitations to this policy not least because it only covers 30 hours for 38 weeks of the year, and offers no reduction for primary school children. There may also be other reasons why parents are less inclined to take up more formal childcare such as practicalities, flexibility or lack of suitable care (especially for children with SEND). But we do not know how far decisions are made with child wellbeing in mind, and the implications of these decisions for children, for example in terms of the kinds of activities they are doing when being looked after by parents during the 9-5 day. The project will examine how far the 30 hours expansion and costs of childcare balance with other reasons to influence hybrid workers childcare arrangements – teasing out constraints versus preferences.

Why do childcare arrangements matter for hybrid working parents?

The Employment Act did not include the “right to switch off” like some other countries eg. (Ireland), meaning employees do not have the legal right to disengage from work outside of normal working hours. Whilst some hybrid workers will experience the benefits of working at home, others may experience blurred boundaries and work-family conflict. Parents looking after children during the 9-5 day may move work to evening and weekends to make up for this. In the context of gender role norms, it is more likely that mothers will use hybrid work to undertake childcare, and less likely to successfully place boundaries between work and childcare whilst working at home. Whilst hybrid work may facilitate female labour and reduce the need for expensive formal childcare, there is also the risk it will overburden mothers, leading to higher work-family conflict and lower wellbeing. This may be especially the case for mothers in lower-income occupations, who are more likely to take on most of the responsibility for childcare. This project will examine how different combinations of working at home and in the office, and different childcare arrangements, including parental care, impact on work-family balance and wellbeing for mothers and fathers in different socio-economic circumstances.

This project will seek to influence both childcare and employment policy at a national, regional, local and employer level, as well as inform working parents. This will include policy briefings, employer and provider toolkits and infographics for parents.

Foundations of Managing British Olympics: Institutions through Time

By Alex Gillett and Kevin Tennent

What was the British contribution to the development of the Olympic Games as an institution in the nineteenth and early twentieth century?

A large group of people in white attire participating in a celebration or ceremony, with confetti falling. The scene appears to be part of an Olympic event, featuring individuals holding the Union Jack flag.
Foundations of Managing British Olympics

The 18th century concept of a ‘Grand Tour’ to Europe awakened a new interest in classical Greece and Rome, revitalising the concept of the ancient Olympic games as a show of physical strength and prowess. This came together with the developing educational ideology of muscular Christianity in the mid-19th century, originating from the playing fields of England’s public schools, stressing the physical as well as mental development of the young men who would enter public life. These men moved into employment in a range of professional and clerical roles, from the military to banking, bringing such values to bear on the organisation of amateur sport, which in time became a regularised system for competition. Sport was cleaned up, to be pursued by amateurs for its own sake, with betting and monetary prizes banned, although this did not prevent managerial values from entering the system in terms of governance.  

This structure and moralising ethos partly inspired the Frenchman Baron de Coubertin to form the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1892. Our book expands on existing knowledge of this early history of the modern Olympics,  demonstrating how British involvement included building and reinforcing what became known as ‘the classic Olympic system’ (Chappalet, 2023, p. 785-786). This was a structure of interlocking distributed responsibility based on the collaboration of the Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games, National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and National and International Sports federations.  Each games would have its own local organising committee, while each sport would have national and later international governing bodies, and each country its own Olympic committee which drew these bodies together.  For instance, in England soccer had the Football Association as a national governing body, then FIFA established in 1904 as an international governing body, but there was also a British Olympic Association, established in 1905, which represented the interests of all British Olympic sports to the IOC. This interlocking structure of cooperation started to establish itself in the mid-1900s.  We end the book with the Intercalated Games in Athens in 1906, just before the British hosted the games in London in 1908.  (We will be covering this in a future volume.)

National Pavilions at Paris 1900 World’s Fair – from left to right the British, Belgian, Norwegian,  German, and Spanish pavilions.
Photo: Brown University Library https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:87164/

The early Olympiads were ambitious projects which aimed to serve as pacifist meeting places for young people from a range of nations. From the start they attempted to emulate the industrial World’s Fair, or exposition movement, building on a nineteenth century tradition of entertainment based on the grand spectacle involving technological novelty which we summarise as ‘technotainment’. Governments, including the British, sponsored official pavilions to demonstrate national industries, fostering a sense of peaceful international competition.  Sideshows including rides and displays of colonized peoples entertained the public. The 1900 (Paris) and 1904 (St. Louis) Olympiads took place alongside World’s Fair events which helped to finance them. The first Olympics in Athens in 1896 was a free-standing event which caught the public imagination throughout Europe, including in the UK, but proved expensive to host. The ancient stadium was refurbished at great cost, and a new velodrome constructed. Running parallel to World’s Fairs allowed the fledgling amateur sporting movement to grow while accumulating legitimacy through fostering more visual international competition on the sports field.

Competitors take their places for a 100m heat at the Athens 1896 games
Photo: Public Domain

Our book is the first to explore the British contribution to the rise of the modern Olympics and place it in historical context. Despite involving the wealthiest European and North American nations, the games did not evolve in a linear fashion and the events and participation in them were often inconsistent. For instance, the 1900 Paris games were not officially advertised as an Olympic games at the time, while for cost and organisational reasons the British missed competing in St Louis in 1904. The organization of multi-sport tournaments involving unpaid athletes with only steam trains, shipping, post and telegraph as the available transport and communication technologies was an impressive undertaking, but could also prove a barrier to participation. Britain’s amateur sporting enthusiasts collaborated with those of other countries and contributed with aplomb. In contrast to those from continental Europe, British athletes self-organised and participated without government funding or sponsorship until the post-1945 period. The transformation of ad hoc offshoots of World’s Fairs into the global megaprojects of today involved a host of managerial, organisational, and institutional innovations, creating structures that continue to have a meaning which resonates in the twenty-first century.

The Screenwriter’s Conundrum: Why the Streaming Boom Is Not Benefitting the People Who Write the Shows


By Hyojung Sun and Carolyn Hunter

A person holding a Samsung remote control in front of a television displaying a streaming interface, with decorative figures in the background.
Photo by Erik Mclean

While streaming giants are booming, the writers behind our favorite shows face a precarious financial future. Is the shift from residuals to one-off buyouts jeopardizing the next generation of creative storytelling?

We live in a golden age of television, driven by digital technology. With seemingly endless new shows and back catalogues available on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, viewers have never had more to watch. But behind the scenes of this spectacular boom, the people who write the stories—the screenwriters—are facing a profound shift that is making their careers more precarious than ever.

A recent series of interviews with UK screenwriters reveals a stark reality: while streaming giants have created exciting new opportunities, they are rapidly dismantling the traditional financial safety nets that writers rely on, trading long-term security for a single, upfront payment.

The One-Off Payment

The advent of streaming platforms is poised to disrupt an industrial practice that has stood for over 70 years, dating back to the rise of television in the 1950s. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) was founded in part to ensure that writers receive accurate on-screen credit and appropriate compensation for their creative contributions. As new technology made the re-broadcasting of shows commonplace, ensuring that original creators received ongoing payment became crucial. This system, known as “residuals,” ensures a writer receives a series of payments—in addition to the original script fee—every time their work is re-aired, sold internationally, or distributed on a new platform. Residuals, albeit relatively modest to many writers, provide a vital income bridge during the long, uncertain periods between jobs. For some, they can be a pension fund. Beyond their economic value, residuals also represent an acknowledgement of the writer’s creative contribution.

Today, streaming platforms typically require writers to sign flat-fee buyout contracts. In this model, the company pays the screenwriter a slightly higher upfront fee—typically 100% to 145% of the initial script fee—in exchange for complete, perpetual ownership of the work. For writers, it’s effectively a one-off arrangement.

Once the show is commissioned by a streaming platform, the buyout fee is the only money the writers will ever receive for their work, even if the series becomes a global smash hit watched by hundreds of millions of people for the next decade. In other words, the value of the content becomes detached from the person who created it. 

Why Do Writers Take the Deal?

Given the clear long-term loss, why are writers accepting these deals? Our recent report investigating this issue highlighted several factors that force the writer’s hand:

  1. Precarious Work: Writing is inherently an insecure profession. Development phases can last for years with little or no pay, and jobs are often feast or famine. An immediate, substantial buyout offers financial relief and stability right now, which can seem far more valuable than an unpredictable trickle of residuals years down the line.
  2. Unpredictable Residuals: Residuals were always volatile, but in the new global streaming environment, tracking repeat fees has become even murkier. It’s hard to bet on a future payment stream when you don’t even know if it will materialise.
  3. Power Imbalance: Streaming services hold immense power, offering writers the potential for global stardom. For a writer offered a life-changing opportunity, the choice is often to take the buyout or lose the job entirely. The asymmetrical power relations make meaningful negotiation for long-term pay nearly impossible for individuals.

The Lack of Transparency

Compounding the problem for screenwriters is a crippling lack of transparency.

Screenwriters found it incredibly challenging to quantify the impact of these changes on their earnings for two reasons:

  1. Secret Viewing Figures: Unlike traditional television broadcasters, streaming services refuse to release their viewing or subscription numbers. This secrecy makes it impossible for writers (or their agents) to accurately gauge the market value of their work or to argue for fair compensation based on the revenues generated by the show.
  2. Contract Confusion: Many writers admitted they lacked clarity on the details of their own contracts, often relying entirely on their agents to navigate the complex legalese and negotiate rates. This reliance is due, in part, to the sheer volume and complexity of the new contracts being dictated by global streamers.

The Double-Edged Sword

For writers, the arrival of streaming services has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, the demand for content is massive. Streaming services need to constantly feed their global subscriber base, opening up countless new slots for scripts that traditional UK broadcasters might never have commissioned.

On the other hand, the benefits of this boom are not shared equally. Streaming companies tend to produce shows with higher budgets and bigger scope, meaning they lean heavily on established, experienced screenwriters. The new work largely bypasses mid-career and emerging writers, making it harder than ever for new voices to break through and develop their skills.

This shift is not just about individual paychecks; it’s about the health of the entire industry. The movement toward flat-fee buyouts and prolonged periods of unpaid development work may lead to increased insecurity and precarity for screenwriters, reducing the ability to continue producing high-quality content over time. 

Furthermore, this financial concentration at the top has a chilling effect on diversity and inclusion. While streaming platforms have broadened the content they air, the labour may become concentrated among a small group of highly experienced, and often less diverse, writers. As streaming is increasingly replacing traditional television, which once offered long-term series that nurtured emerging talent, new writers are losing the spaces where they could develop their skills. It may appear healthy on the surface now, but sooner or later, the talent pipeline may dry up, eventually leading to a drop in creative vitality for the whole industry.

What can be done to improve the industry?

To safeguard the future of British screenwriting and ensure the stream of original content continues, the report makes two key recommendations:

  1. Collective Strength: Freelance screenwriters need robust collective representation—similar to existing industry agreements—to negotiate standardized long-term payment structures with the powerful streaming platforms.
  2. Invest in Talent: The industry needs strong investment in dedicated training and development programs to support new and mid-career screenwriters, closing the emerging skill gap and ensuring that the next generation of storytellers can afford to start their careers.

This structural change means the financial success of a show now only benefits the platform, not the creative people who conceived it. If we want diverse, innovative British stories, we must ensure the writers who create them can build sustainable, long-term careers.

Criminal Landlords in the Private Rented Sector in England 

ESRC-funded research exposes how organised crime and slum landlords exploit vulnerable tenants through abuse, illegal evictions, and coercion

Dr Julie Rugg
By Dr Julie Rugg

The private rented sector (PRS) accommodates around 20 per cent of all households in England. The PRS is generally regarded as a problematic sector within the housing market, and the introduction of the Renters’ Rights Act in 2025 seeks to improve tenant experience by increasing security of tenure and strengthening local authority enforcement action to improve property quality. For example, the Act expands the reach of Civil Penalty Notices (CPNs) in terms of the range of infractions that could be subject to a CPN, and the level of the fine. Non-compliant landlords face fines of up to £40,000 per offence. 

However, recent ESRC-funded research has indicated that the Renters Rights Act may not be wholly effective in tackling landlord-perpetrated crime in the PRS. This research, now coming to a conclusion, brought together criminology and policing specialists, housing policy and housing law academics, and Safer Renting, a third sector charity working with marginalised tenants subject to landlord crime. 

In 2020, Safer Renting and Julie Rugg collaborated on the report Journeys in the Shadow Private Rented Sector, which highlighted the range of criminal behaviours that Safer Renting staff routinely encountered in the course of their case work. Using this springboard, a larger, £1m research grant was secured from the ESRC to explore the issue in more detail.

The programme operated with major strands that explored: policing the sector and qualitative accounts from landlords of their own criminality; multi-agency enforcement and good practice; and housing justice and tenant experiences of landlord criminality, including an in-depth exploration of illegal eviction. The project deliberately focussed attention away from London and used Yorkshire and the Humber as a case study region. Engagement in the region and with practitioners more widely indicates that landlord-perpetrated crime is endemic in the market.

The research, published in four major grey reports, indicates that there are multiple modes of landlord criminality in the PRS. This includes criminality linked to organised crime groups. The PRS provides space and opportunity for cannabis farming and can facilitate modern slavery. The research also identified the operation of slum landlords, whose business model includes letting poor-quality property with no intention of investing in repairs or maintenance, and with no regard to tenant welfare. These landlords are fully conversant with the law and use techniques of evasion to prevent or deter local authorities pursuing prosecution. Letting agents can also be involved in different kinds of criminality, often evading prosecution through denying culpability – for example, blaming the landlord or the tenant for cannabis farms discovered in managed properties. 

Cannabis farm in a rented property. Image supplied by Safer Renting staff attending a raid with the police in 2025. 

The project undertook detailed exploration of local authority enforcement action, working with case-study local authorities to explore decision-making around prosecution. There are multiple obstacles to prosecution, including low staffing levels within private sector housing teams; an unwillingness to progress to prosecution because of limited expertise in housing law amongst local authority legal teams; and disincentives created by sentences that did not always reflect the severity of the harm caused by the landlord. Where local authorities had a stronger enforcement record, it was evident that a decision in favour of proactivity had been made at a higher strategic level that improved resources and skills at the front-line. 

A further major obstacle was a lack of certainty around definitions of criminality. Findings suggest that defining ‘slum landlords’ as a criminal type creates a stronger imperative to prosecute by removing uncertainties around culpability. 

The research also, for the first time, defined landlord-perpetrated tenant abuse as a type of criminal behaviour. Slum landlords are often able to retain tenants through coercive and bullying behaviours which can include trespass, threat and control of utilities, arbitrarily interrupting of supply. Further elements of exploitation include adding spurious fees to the rent and taking over a tenant’s welfare payments. Properties are often overcrowded. Many tenant types are at an enhanced risk of exploitation because they find it difficult to access rented property in the ‘mainstream’ market. For example, they may not pass standard credit checks because of low or fluctuating income, or they may have mental health problems, experience of the criminal justice system or be vulnerable because of their migrant status. These tenants are trapped in poor-quality properties because street homelessness is a likely alternative.

The programme of research also included the first major investigation into illegal eviction since 2000. The Protection from Eviction Act 1977 defines harassment and illegal eviction as criminal offences, but little resource is dedicated to prosecution. Local authorities do not routinely log the incidence of illegal eviction, which was a commonplace experience for the most marginal renters. These households could be subject to ‘lock-change’ eviction: the landlord changing the locks, simultaneously deprived the tenant of their home and – very often – of all their possessions. Police rarely intervene despite the criminality of the offence, and there was substantial evidence of officers arriving at the scene and supporting the landlord.

The research concluded that the PRS is ‘criminogenic’, in providing multiple opportunities and limited deterrence for criminal behaviour. The Renters’ Rights Act contributes to some reduction in criminogenic conditions by controlling access to the market through landlord registration. However, no measures are in place to improve the access to the mainstream market of excluded tenants who form the main demand group for ‘shadow’ rentals. Situational prevention supports the need for early-intervention enforcement: very often, abusive landlord behaviour is unchallenged until it concludes in an illegal eviction. Containing the harm of criminal landlordism requires local authorities to reach for harder enforcement measures more quickly, and by doing so control criminals’ access to their assets by using banning orders or interim management orders. Civil penalty notices are unlikely to remove the worst offenders from the market. Tackling criminal landlordism effectively requires strategic, proactive responses that encompasses a range of possible interventions.

The ESRC research team have, during the course of the project, built on networks and collaborations to ensure that the project’s findings are reaching the right practitioner audiences. These include local authority private sector housing teams that routinely enforce housing legislation and police at neighbourhood and specialist unit levels. Findings have also been circulated to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with the aim of ensuring that application of the Renters’ Rights Act is informed by an understanding of how the shadow PRS operates. 

This research was funded by the ESRC, grant ES/X001687/1

Encouraging No and Low Alcohol Availability and Visibility in Hospitality Settings

With more people moderating their alcohol consumption – or not drinking at all – ensuring no and low alcohol options are available, appealing and visible in hospitality settings is more important than ever.

By Prof Victoria Wells (School for Business and Society), Dr Nadine Waehning (School for Business and Society), Dr Sarah Forbes (School for Business and Society) and Dr Emily Nicholls (Department of Sociology)

Part of the team: (from L to R) Prof Victoria Wells, Dr Nadine Waehning, and Dr Emily Nicholls
Part of the team: (from L to R) Prof Victoria Wells, Dr Nadine Waehning, and Dr Emily Nicholls

Alcohol contributes to hundreds of health conditions – including stroke, heart disease and cancer – so it is no wonder that many public health organisations are looking for ways to reduce alcohol consumption.  No and low alcohol alternatives (NoLos) are increasingly being considered as a way to encourage lower levels of alcohol consumption. A range of health organisations have highlighted the potential value of these products as part of a health strategy to reduce alcohol consumption (see for example the 10 year health plan for England).  

Businesses are also recognising the value of NoLos. Mintel notes that in 2025 the market for no and low alcohol drinks was worth £413million. Academic researchers have found that people drinking at ‘risky’ levels are particularly likely to try no and low alcohol products and that consumers report using NoLos as a way to reduce their alcohol intake.  With more adults moderating their alcohol consumption or cutting out alcohol entirely, both established alcohol companies and new NoLo providers are responding to this growing market with innovative products. 

As researchers interested in brewing companies, pubs and consumer choice, health and wellbeing, (as well as  finding we were drinking more no and low alternatives ourselves!) this new trend caught our attention.  

Studying no and low alcohol consumer behaviour

We started with a systematic literature review to understand what we know and don’t know about consumer behaviour related to no and low alcohol consumption.  Our analysis using the Mojet model showed that we know very little on this topic, so we decided to explore further. We also conducted a small-scale but in-depth study examining the marketing and consumption of NoLo drinks, to gain a better initial understanding of how such products are marketed and how they are incorporated into people’s everyday (non)drinking routines. 

We decided to complete a q-methodology analysis to understand more about purchasers and consumers of these products.  We found that consumers who were not drinking NoLos identified poor branding and cost as key barriers to consumption.  We also did some live experimental research in a number of North Yorkshire pubs to look at ways to encourage patrons to choose NoLo alternatives.  

One key finding that has emerged out of all of our research is the lack of availability and visibility of no and low alcohol alternatives in hospitality settings. This is also supported  by recent research from KAMxEverleaf in their Raising the Bar report.  Additionally recent KAM research shows that 4 out of 10 consumers have left a hospitality venue early because of poor no and low options.  We decided to do something about this, and work with publicans to support NoLo visibility, promotion and choice in bars, pubs, and other hospitality settings.

Supporting publicans and hospitality venues
Initially, we worked with the City of York council to develop a publicans’ guide, which outlined why publicans should offer no and low alternatives, and what best practice strategies they could use.  We also developed a range of point of sale materials for publicans to use,  designed by York St John University design student Sam Armstrong. These included pump clips, stickers, posters, and beer mats. tion or cutting out alcohol entirely, both established alcohol companies and new NoLo providers are responding to this growing market with innovative products.

Publicans guide

We launched the publicans’ guide at the York CAMRA Beer Festival in September 2025 and it has been great to see the project rolling out across the city of York since then.  Feedback on the project from publicans has been highly positive, with 86% stating that the materials have increased visibility of NoLo offerings, and 76% convinced they have increased consumer awareness of their offerings. Ease of use was noted by 93% of respondents, 90% found the guide helpful in promoting their no and low alcohol offerings.  

Interest in the project is spreading outside of York and we are talking to several different councils, public health bodies, and other organisations to extend the reach of the project. We’re particularly happy that North East Lincolnshire council is replicating the project as well and look forward to learning more from their feedback.  

Joining the publications’ guide and point of sale materials, our NoLo venue map of York was also successfully launched in December, in time for all those Christmas parties!  We want the map to support all consumers who are looking for no and low alternatives, whether they are short or long-term non-drinkers (yes of course we are thinking of #dryjanuary!) or are moderating their alcohol consumption permanently or temporarily.  We also wanted to support hospitality venues and encourage people to still visit venues during the start of the year when many pubs, bars and restaurants struggle with lower visitor numbers. And finally, making sure that everyone has something to drink in the pub makes these spaces inclusive and welcoming for all!

All the way through the project we’ve designed all materials to be as accessible for hospitality venues as possible.  We know hospitality venues don’t have spare cash to spend on these and we’ve provided them to venues free of charge (our initial print run and design was funded by University of York School for Business and Society internal funding).  All the materials are also available free of charge on our microsite and we’re happy for any organisation, venue, or council to use them! You can also follow the project on Instagram @nolowproject.  

We’re already planning new initiatives to roll out our NoLo materials further working with a range of public health organisations, councils and alcohol bodies.  We also want to continue to support hospitality venues in offering these products. We hope that in the future these types of materials won’t be necessary as every hospitality venue will offer no and low alternatives, promoting them actively alongside full alcohol products.  But for now, they are needed and are a great way to help publicans and consumers. Let’s raise a glass to that as we look forward to rolling them out further!

Example point of sale materials

No and Low Venue Map of York

Mental health and employment: understanding economic inactivity trends in social context

One in five adults in the UK is economically inactive. What is the causal relationship between mental health and capacity for work?

Dr Annie Irvine
By Dr Annie Irvine

Rising rates of mental ill health among working aged people, especially younger people, are causing significant concern to the UK Government. As of August 2025, one in five adults in the UK is economically inactive. Over recent years, mental health problems have risen to become the most dominant reason for economic inactivity, when captured in national surveys of employment status. Likewise, benefit statistics show mental health as the most prominent reason for health-related claims. 

Rising rates of psychological distress among people across the age range are clearly evident. Less clear, however, is the causal relationship between mental health and economic inactivity. Qualitative research, which delves below the surface of statistical trends, reveals a more complex picture of the factors shaping employment opportunities and outcomes for people with experience of mental health problems.

My recent research, carried out in collaboration with the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, unravels the complexity in the causes of economic inactivity, by paying close attention to the perspectives and life stories of people with lived experience of mental distress. Our findings point to important ways in which we need to broaden the approach to understanding the interactions between mental health and economic inactivity, and how social policies should respond in tackling the problem. 

Mental ill health does not tell the full story of economic inactivity

Firstly, it is essential to recognise that people’s distress is real – genuine and sometimes severely impairing. But mental health problems do not exist in a vacuum. They are nearly always intertwined in highly difficult life circumstances and events. And those circumstances and events put up barriers to work at the same time as impacting people’s mental health. Using mental ill health as a blanket explanation does not tell the full story of why people become economically inactive or why they stay stuck in this situation. 

This came through clearly in our recent study that included 70 people who had experience of mental health problems and had claimed out-of-work benefits in the UK welfare system. In our analysis, we looked in close detail at how people described the things that shaped and constrained their capacity for work. All 70 of these individuals had experienced times when the symptoms of mental distress and the functional impacts on work were very real and at times very significant. But paying close attention to people’s whole stories showed that many other factors beyond mental health symptoms were shaping their capacity for work and the realities they faced in the labour market.

People spoke about the difficulties of finding work that fitted not only with any ongoing health limitations but also with their wider life commitments, with caring responsibilities, with prior experience and skills, aspirations and preferences and the locations they could feasibly work in.

They talked about a much wider range of personal circumstances that shaped their opportunities to sustain work. Some of these–for example, homelessness, domestic violence, abuse, or lone parenthood–had contributed to their mental health problems. But these circumstances also had direct effects on their ability to stay in work.

People also talked about the structural barriers they faced, from constrained labour markets, precarious employment, migration status, transport barriers and inflexible employers. Some faced a ‘benefits trap’ where moving into employment risked leaving them worse off overall.

All of these things worked together in complex, interwoven ways, to constrain people’s capacity for work.

Figure 1:  Factors shaping and constraining capacity for work: perspectives of benefit claimants with experience of mental distress

Tackling economic inactivity is complex and needs a holistic approach

The key message from these qualitative research findings is that we need a much more holistic approach to understanding and measuring the underlying causes of economic inactivity. National surveys that produce the headline statistics on economic inactivity offer people very limited categories to describe the reasons why they are not in work. But when we listen to people’s whole stories in qualitative research, being economically inactive ‘because of long-term sickness’ never fully explains people’s barriers or the support they may need. This is not because their mental distress isn’t real, but because it is only part of their story – it is an oversimplified description of the challenges they face. These challenges sit at the personal, interpersonal, socioeconomic and structural levels. This complexity is key to really understanding what is driving that upward curve in economic inactivity and what effective solutions will look like.

November saw publication of the government-commissioned Keep Britain Working Review. This independent Review, led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, former Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, was tasked with understanding the drivers of rising levels of inactivity and ill health, and developing recommendations for practical actions. There is much to commend in the Review’s analysis of the problem and proposed solutions. However, there is still a lack of clear recognition that people’s difficulties staying in or returning to work are often about much more than ill health in isolation.To say it again, people’s mental health problems are very real. But the statistical trends that keep hitting the headlines do not tell the full story of why people are struggling to find and keep work. This is not a question of whether we are ‘overmedicalising’ people’s distress. It is about a need to take a more holistic approach to understanding economic inactivity. If policies persist with a narrow and individualised focus on mental health and psychological treatments, they will miss essential areas for intervention around employment quality and flexibility, around access to lifelong education and training, around childcare, transport infrastructure and secure housing, and around prevention and protection from interpersonal violence. Improvements in all of these areas are key to reversing the trends in economic inactivity alongside continued attention to improving the nation’s mental health.