Research methodology

The focus of this study is the cost of commuting to London for work.

We have used 17 of the most popular commuter towns to calculate these costs. These are: Chatham, Luton, Basildon, Harlow, Southend, Maidstone, Slough, Worthing, Chelmsford, Reading, Fleet, Tunbridge Wells, Hemel Hempstead, Oxford, Guildford, Beaconsfield and St Albans.

To be able to provide a consistent benchmark we have used Holborn as our nominal London office location for the purpose of calculating the commute.

In addition to the primary train commute we have factored in London Underground transfers, and we have also made an allowance of 15 mins to and from people’s homes to their home commuter station.

London journey times are taken from CityMapper app based on an arrival to work time of 9 am on a Monday and a departure from work at 6 pm on Monday (an assumption that this is an “average” London working day).

We have used the 2019 fares as listed by Trainline to calculate the train season tickets, and we have combined this with London Transport’s 2019 Zone 1-2 monthly Oyster card charges.

When we refer to the PR industry’s average London annual salary of £47,370 per year this is taken from the PRCA’s annual PR and Communications Census. £35,749 is an approximation of the net salary after tax that an employee would receive based on the gross salary of £47,370 calculated using the MoneySavingExpert.com income tax calculator.

When we refer to the average cost of £7.75 per hour for childcare in the South East, this is taken from a study into national childcare costs done by Childcare.co.uk.

We have calculated a working year as 261 days, and we have used 25 days as the average holiday allocation.