Relocation is Good for Our Nation’s Health

David Werran comments on Matthew Parris’ piece in The Times on the 20^th January (“Social mobility is creating dustbin Britain”)

A classic and not-so-distant example was the Quality Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA). Located in Piccadilly opposite the Ritz, the organisation and its 700 staff were destined for Coventry in the light of the Lyons Review. And despite ample high-quality new office space springing up in the city’s station quarter the QCDA board decided to create a new bespoke office. A lengthy tendering process ensued, the new office was delivered (late) in 2009 and relocation proceeded that same year. In 2010 there was a new Conservative Government and the first action of the newly appointed Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, was to abolish QCDA. When subsequently it was discovered that said agency had signed a 25-year lease with no break clauses, the tax-payer was left with a liability for years to come.

Will the lessons of the past be learnt? Sadly, the omens are not good. As part of an ambitious transformation programme, HMRC is to consolidate its operations into 14 ‘super-hubs’ located in the UK’s main regional cities. Whatever the merits of this programme known as ‘building our future’ – early critics are the National Audit Office and in recent weeks the Public Accounts Committee – one of the consequences of this policy will be to absorb HMRC activities from the sub-eregions. So 3,000 posts will transfer from Bradford to Leeds, 1,500 posts from Southend-on-Sea to Stratford – not to mention the myriad small offices dotted around in some of the most deprived parts of the country. Ominously, HMRC is starting to take out 20- and 25-year leases with developers so these super-hubs will be around for a very long time, irrespective of social change. And it is inevitable that these hubs will be government’s (i.e. Cabinet Office’s) locations of choice for the Whitehall dispersal programme.

There are a number of arguments against the wider civil service consolidation in the super-hubs. These big city locations will be more expensive than alternatives in the regions and will not be to the liking of many of the quango candidates, who will view absorption into the hubs with some alarm. But the most important argument is the ‘public interest’. The relocation of valuable civil service posts from London should be dispersed for the benefit of a wide variety of towns and cities where the logistics, labour supply and other factors make sense. And local government should be charged with making the office property options available as they are best-equipped to advise and assist implementation. In this way the public interest is best-eserved and the sector can try to mitigate or perhaps reverse the situation identified in Matthew Parris’s article.