2.6 million home offices in the UK

Some 10 per cent of all UK households (2.6 million) say they accommodate at least one person who works from home for at least part of the time.

The typical homeworker is a father, aged between 25 and 44 years old, who works in middle management, a survey by Point Topic found.

Around 40 per cent of households with homeworkers include teleworkers: employees of an organisation with offices somewhere else. The remaining 60 per cent are self-employed people who are mostly freelancers but there is also a small proportion who run businesses with employees using their homes as headquarters.

Of the 2,122 respondents, 16.1 per cent said they use the internet for work-related tasks.

Homeworking is gaining momentum - workers from households in the East, South East and South West of England are more likely to work from home than those in any other region.

Almost 40 per cent of homeworkers live in those three regions. Take-up of home working is slightly lower - but still above the UK average - in central London. The East Midlands, North East, Northern Ireland and Wales fall well below the UK average.