Louise Haigh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2016-03-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what the average cost of floor space is at his Department’s office at (a) St Paul’s Place, Sheffield and (b) 1 Victoria Street, London.

Joseph Johnson

We have committed to making changes to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) by 2020 that will result in a more flexible Department, reduced headcount and far fewer delivery bodies.

Our business needs to be designed in a way that works for this smaller workforce and more streamlined structures.

To support this direction of travel, we are moving towards seven or so centres by 2020, supported by a regional footprint for those whose work needs to be at a local level.

We want each of these centres to focus on a key business activity so that we can bring the relevant expertise together.

We are proposing that one of these centres will be a combined BIS headquarters and policy centre in London, close to our Ministers.

The average cost of floor space at each of the Department’s offices is:

a) £483.64 per sqm at St Paul’s Place

b) £686.20 per sqm at 1 Victoria Street

The annual rent paid by BIS over the last 5 years is:

By the end of this reform programme in 2020, we will have fewer employees in London and BIS as a whole, and aim to save £350million in operating expenditure overall. The vast majority of employees within the BIS Group will continue to be based outside London.