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 annual rent his Department paid at (a) 1 Victoria Street, London and (b) St Paul’s Place, Sheffield in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

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.