Ilovecheese
Do you not recall this,
Several UK government departments have relocated thousands of civil service roles from central London to northern England through the Places for Growth initiative and recent Whitehall rationalisation plans.The departments that have established major hubs and second headquarters in the north include:HM Treasury: Established a major base, the Darlington Economic Campus, moving hundreds of Treasury and other department staff to the Tees Valley.Department for Business and Trade (DBT): Made Darlington one of its primary headquarters outside of London.Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT): Established its second headquarters in Salford, Greater Manchester.Home Office: Relocated thousands of roles, including teams tackling exploitation and abuse, to hubs in the North West.Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS): Set up significant operations in Manchester.Ministry of Justice (MoJ): Shifted thousands of roles out of the capital as part of a broad Plan for London strategy that includes regional hubs in cities like Leeds, Sheffield, and Manchester.Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ): Established a significant energy campus base in Manchester alongside Aberdeen.These departments are in the process of cutting their central London office footprints by over a million square feet to save hundreds of millions of taxpayer pounds annually.
This raises two issues, 1) Many staff did not want to relocate, many had partners working in the South and many had children in Secondary schools or local colleges and vast relocation packages had to be found.
2) Move too many people to the North in a short period and house prices will start to rise, and pressures put on services.
It’s quite normal, though maybe deemed unfair, that govts are based in Capital Cities.
