I write with reference to the article on the front page of your 3 August issue entitled ’Clear your desk - firms embrace agile working’.

The local high street has been dying for years now. It is remarkable that the top 100 firms seem only just to have woken up to the fact that cloud-based working with all staff working from home with remote access to all systems is the way forward - with the complete abandonment of all fixed high street offices.

My firm has been working this way exclusively now for the last four to five years. We are doing extremely well, because we are way ahead of our competitors both on price and on instant and high-quality service standards.

What is interesting is how  firms with several fixed high street offices, very often on very long leases with all their associated overheads, will compete with firms like ours in the short- to medium-term.

It generally takes a supertanker a huge amount of time to change course; whereas the change of course by a ’speedboat’ like our firm is instant.

I am, however, bemused by the term ’agile working’. Perhaps that term should be replaced by ’simply being able to read the writing on the wall as soon as it is written’.

I think there is a huge opportunity here for the ‘small’ guys to steal a march on the ‘big guys’.

Richard A Hirst, Solicitor Director, Laker Legal, Carnforth

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