Today marks six months since the UK went into lockdown as the pandemic hit home. We asked the University of Kent's Professor Richard Scase to imagine a changed Britain as if it was New Year’s Eve 2021.

There have been countless debates about how well the government managed the whole outbreak. It started in March 2020 and continues today.

Rather like the debate on Brexit which lasted three years from 2016 through to 2019. Media commentators have not allowed the coronavirus to go away.

Even with the problems of making reliable international comparisons, it does seem odd on looking back to summer 2020, the UK had a Covid-19 death rate six times higher than Germany and higher than even France and Spain.

Questions continue to be asked with numerous and conflicting answers offered by politicians, civil servants and health experts.

Although the 2020 lockdown had a traumatic impact on our working, family and home lives, was it anything more than a painful, albeit short-term event?

Or has it had a far longer and lasting impact upon our society and the ways we live? As we enter 2022, we are able to make some judgements.

Without doubt our work lives permanently changed. The outbreak completed a transition that started around the advent of the 21st century when the internet offered opportunities for new work patterns. With the decline of factories, there was no necessity for people to travel into work to work.

Factories had compelled us to do this because of machinery bolted to factory floors. In the age of the internet it was no longer necessary for people to commute simply to log-on and work on their computers.

It was becoming more self-evident congested roads, expensive crowded trains and traffic pollution were the outcome of management custom and practice rather than the need for workers travelling into the office.

Yes, perhaps for once or twice a week for brainstorming, but not 9 to 5, five days a week. The lockdown compulsorily forced employers to reject their old assumptions about the need to watch their staff achieve their targets under close personal supervision.

It proved working from home was just as productive - better still, office space could be downsized with lower operating and fixed costs. Since 2020, patterns of home working have become consolidated.

There are fewer journeys to work producing a sustained improvement in air quality and a long-term reduction in congestion and traffic hold-ups. The population’s health has improved considerably as a result.

Homes and environment

There have been other broader impacts. Prices for office properties have declined in London and in other larger cities.

House prices in commuter communities have fallen with less need for five-day commuting.

‘Calling in’ to the office for meetings once or twice a week allows for living in more remote locations such as east Kent and Romney Marsh where house prices have increased. A greater environmental awareness has forced national and local government to respond.

Towards the end of 2020, Whitehall produced a ‘Green Recovery’ programme and big business lobbied for serious financial incentives for investment and strategies that would tackle climate change.

Politicians now take climate change and global warming seriously instead of paying lip service and engaging in ‘politically correct’ rhetorical debate as they did before the outbreak.

Healthier and happier

During lockdown, people took up cycling, walking and running. Bicycle sales doubled.

Folk re-discovered the countryside as men, women AND children were forced to give up routine daily ‘snacking’ because coffee shops and fast food outlets were closed.

They became aware of the dangers of obesity and changed their diets. There has been a reduction in the estimated 28% of the adult population who were obese in 2020. Shops sold out of flour and other home-cooking ingredients during the pandemic as families started to eat more healthy, sustainable meals.

It started a revival of vegetable gardening. Lawns were ripped up and replaced by plots in back gardens for growing potatoes, Brussels sprouts and cabbages. It was back to the past as young families adopted what their grandparents used to do as part of their everyday life.

High streets and students

The virus has had a lasting legacy on the high streets of towns and cities across the land. Beforehand, online shopping had already passed a death sentence on many national retailers. The nail in the coffin was hammered even deeper with the outbreak of Covid-19.

This has permanently changed the character of town and city centres. High streets now consist of nail parlours, tattoo services and hairdressing salons.

They are dominated by the personal needs of younger and more affluent consumers. They have the character of university campuses.

Take a look at the centres of Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and even Canterbury. In this there is a great danger to their future as if higher education shifts to become the online providers of learning, there will be a drastic drop in students attending universities on a full-time, three-year, residential basis.

They will study while living at their parental homes. Colleges will do little more than offer monthly weekend face-to-face seminars.

In the old days, students had to go to university because the knowledge they wanted was monopolised by lecturers and libraries.

Today, knowledge they need is on their laptops on their kitchen tables and in their bedrooms. All they now need from their lecturers is guidance, direction and motivation. Students don’t need to live on a campus for three years to gain that!

Selling by universities of ‘the student experience’ has had its day. Little wonder when it means so many students’ shelf-stacking in supermarkets, working in bars for out-of-the till petty cash and buying trays of beer to watch Netflix with friends in the evenings. Is this ‘experience’ really worth £9,000 a year?

Education timebomb

Higher education is big business in the UK and particularly here in the South East.

There continues to be a big drop of international students wanting to study in this country since the pandemic. The changing delivery of teaching programmes online has merely reinforced the trend. Towns and cities dependent upon higher education for local employment and economic activity, such as Canterbury, have been severely affected.

It has had a huge impact on the vitality of high street shops. Students are significant spenders on fashion, cosmetics and other personalised items.

They are also the providers of low-cost, flexible labour that has been vital for the economic survival of small, independent retailers.

The night-time economy is geared to them. The university provision of home-based, online degree programmes knocks on the head all these features of city life in Kent.

Smaller supermarkets

Online shopping, which had been an activity of affluent consumers buying non-essential, non-food goods, is now taken for granted for food purchases by all demographic sectors.

Supermarkets have reduced their store sizes, leasing out surplus space to smaller independent ‘boutique’ traders. Online food shopping with home deliveries is now the accepted norm.

There is a fundamental change in family relationships and personal lifestyles.

Family shopping trips have been replaced by more home-based activities.

Family dynamics

Mums and dads realise money doesn’t have to be spent for their children ‘to have fun’.

Lockdown demonstrated how much family income could be saved by not snacking in cafes and fast food outlets.

Holidays at home instead of abroad, out-door pursuits and a greater concern for sustainable living has created a more informed, knowledgeable society of adults and children.

It is a population that has rejected the ‘old’ normal and embraced a less consumer-orientated ‘new’ normal. Partners have re-discovered each other, sometimes deciding they do not like what they find.

Break-up and domestic abuse have increased as the national data over the past two years has shown. Working from home reveals frictions and tensions that can be easily concealed when there is a daily commute.

Parents have had to re-attach to their children and re-evaluate their roles.

Before the virus struck, parents were happy to leave the learning process to teachers.

However, the closure of schools forced parents to ‘go back to the old days’ when learning to read and to write was considered as much a parental responsibility as that of teachers.

It has brought learning materials back into the home, albeit on laptops instead of books.

A society changed

The pandemic reminded people of what is important and which jobs are essential in society.

It has generated a debate about wage differentials and reward systems.

The excessive bonuses of corporate executives are challenged while the pay of health workers does not allow them to buy or rent decent homes.

A sense of community has been created that has been absent for several decades because of social, economic and demographic changes.

Neighbours who had never spoken to each other before have become friends.

Community groups have evolved. Local radio, TV and newspapers which were supposed to be redundant in an internet age have become renewed forces. They create a sense of locality, a place for personal identity and belonging that it was assumed had forever been lost.

Big state returns

Despite the rhetoric of the ‘market economy’ pronounced by politicians of all parties, the pandemic brought about the return of the ‘Big State’.

Its intervention into our everyday lives in the spring of 2020 continues to the present day. It will be so in the future as it intervenes to shape our economic, social and personal relations. In a globalised society, pandemics are an ever-present threat.

From the perspective of the timeline New Year’s Eve 2021, the materialistic and go-getting society of old has been replaced by a new, more sustainable, cooperative society.

We have, rather like Sweden, become a ‘post-consumer’ society. Putting aside the huge tragic loss of life, this is the major legacy of the 2020 pandemic.

Richard Scase is Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent. He has advised governments on economic, social and demographic trends.

Read more: All the latest news from Kent