The 2-metre rule may be about to be diluted in England, but job-hunters and home buyers are seeking a more profound form of social distancing post-lockdown by restarting their lives in less densely populated areas. A surge in the number of people looking for jobs outside London in the last two weeks has been mirrored by a spike in city dwellers looking for new homes in more isolated locations. The number of jobseekers wanting to get out of the capital has more than doubled in the last fortnight compared with the same period in 2019, according to the Escape the City careers advisory service. Meanwhile, the proportion of London buyers registering with estate agencies outside of the capital almost doubled in April. Buyers from Manchester and Birmingham also showed increasing interest in rural moves, according to figures analysed by Hamptons estate agency. The destinations where London househunters have registered to search in increasing numbers since lockdown include the Sussex beach town of Worthing, Ipswich in Suffolk and Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, where populations are at least twice as spread out as in the capital. The biggest increase was seen by estate agencies in Aylesbury Vale, in rural Buckinghamshire, where in April 2019, only 28% of people signing up for viewings were from London. Since Covid-19, that number has risen to 44%. Its rolling fields are around 30 times less populated than the London average. The success of home working has this week resulted in the charity Action for Hearing Loss announce it will no longer have a large London office and will only have a meeting space in the capital. Thirteen per cent of London businesses polled for the London Chamber of Commerce also said working from home would become standard practice with no permanent offices. Another factor appears to be a desire to avoid crowds and packed public transport, which have been identified by epidemiologists as hotbeds of viral contagion. “We’re moving out to get away from unnecessary risks,” said Stephen MacKenzie, a fire security consultant moving from the London Borough of Southwark, which had one of the highest Covid-19 infection rates, to a small town in Kent. “We want to be in an area that is more self-contained and reduce the impact of a second phase [of the virus].” Concern may be reflected in mobile phone tracking data showing people have been slower to return to the centres of the largest cities including London, Birmingham and Manchester than to smaller places such as Worthing and Basildon. Urbanists have warned that middle-class flight from the cities could exacerbate inequalities, with people in low-paid jobs such as cleaning, transport and in sandwich bars, who service city centre economies, left behind. “A significant jobs generator has been urban services like hospitality and retail,” said Andrew Carter, the chief executive of the Centre for Cities. “If the middle classes are not going into the city and spending their money it is poorer workers who will suffer and that could exacerbate inequality.” Thomas Hall, 32, a broadcast engineer planning to leave his one-bedroom flat in London for the south coast where he intends to work from home, said he was attracted by the prospect of space in a future that could require continued social distancing. “It would be easier to go out and about without having to take so much care,” he said. “When I go somewhere here I feel the transport network is off limits and I am always keeping an eye on people.” For London buyers, other destinations that recorded the biggest increases in interest in April included Tandridge in Surrey, which includes parts of the North Downs and is 22 times less populated than London, and Medway in Kent, which is more than five times less densely packed. Dominic Jackman, the founder of Escape from City, which helps people find work beyond London, said inquiries over the last fortnight revealed “a fundamental change in jobseeker preferences”. Of 1,000 people signing up to the service, 51% wanted to leave the capital compared with 20% for the same period in 2019. “Pre-Covid, while our jobseekers wanted to ‘escape the rat race’, a lot of them actually were happy living and working in London,” he said. “For the first time ever we have more people wanting to leave London than stay in it which is a huge shift in aspirations.” Stacey Lowman, 34, from Brighton, a city of close to 300,000 people, is going further than simply moving house. She plans to rent out her home and travel the UK and Europe in a panel van fitted with a bed, hob, toilet, shower and solar panels. She plans to continue to work remotely giving careers development advice. “If I can work from home full-time, I can work from my van full-time so long as my internet signal is good enough,” she said. “Cornwall is calling out to me and I desperately want to do the North Coast 500 in Scotland [a 500 mile route around the Highlands].”