New Evidence on Night Work in London
Although night workers make up a little over a quarter of London’s total workers, they are noticeably under-represented in traditional sources of data. Data gathering efforts, and the policy insights that flow from them, still presume the regular “9 to 5” working day, but this is increasingly unrepresentative of people's lived experiences and is not fit for purpose for the millions who work when many of us are enjoying a night out or sleeping.
Data After Dark represents the most comprehensive studies of London’s night workers completed to date, spanning three detailed pieces of work:
- Voices of Night Workers: in-depth, documented, night worker-led discussions
- Didobi Night Worker Report: an extensive survey of workers and their employers
- Mapping Night Work: the innovative spatial analysis of large datasets
Data After Dark was initiated by the UCL Social Data Institute with collaborators from the UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, the Geographic Data Service and Didobi Limited.
The research was supported by the Mayor of London. It received support, advice and funding from UCL Innovation & Enterprise.
Ongoing/Previous Research
- Paper: Revealing the geography of food (in)accessibility for nighttime workers in the Greater London Area , March 2026, UCL Social Data Institute and Geographic Data Service
- Data: London Nighttime Access to Food Retail Options , March 2026, Geographic Data Service
- Paper: Creating the London night-worker geodemographic classification, December 2025, UCL Social Data Institute and Geographic Data Service
- Data: London Night Workers Classification (LNWC), December 2025, Geographic Data Service
- Night-Time Urbanism, 2015–Ongoing, The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
- Night-Time Workers Report, May 2023, UCL Social Data Institute and Didobi
