NatWest abolishes its remote-first category, requiring 13,497 staff into the office two days a week

NatWest is removing the “remote first” working category it created after 2020. From February 2027, the 13,497 staff in that category, who currently attend an office roughly two days a month, will be required on site at least two days a week. A further 17,272 hybrid workers will also have to attend more often than they do now. The change covers Ulster Bank staff in Ireland and Northern Ireland as well as the UK workforce.

Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham called the decision “a kick in the teeth”, pointing to higher travel and childcare costs and to the disruption for disabled workers and carers who built their arrangements around the remote-first commitment. The union has launched a membership survey to gather evidence of the financial and personal impact, and is asking the bank to pause.

Why this matters. Two details make this more than another return-to-office announcement. The affected grades are concentrated in technology, security, data analytics and HR, which are among the bank’s lowest-paid roles, so the commuting cost lands hardest on the people least able to absorb it. And Unite says the 2025 pay deal contained a jointly negotiated blueprint for how future attendance changes would be consulted on, which the bank bypassed by presenting a finished plan. If you took a remote-first role on the strength of a formal category, the lesson is that a category is not a contractual term.

The Financial Services Union, responding on the Ulster Bank side, put it in terms of trust rather than logistics: employers who “trumpeted working from home” have broken a psychological contract formed when home working suited them. For anyone weighing a remote role at a large employer, the question worth asking at interview is whether the arrangement sits in your contract or in a policy that can be withdrawn with fifteen months’ notice.