If all goes well, Warrington could soon be the new Whitehall in the Northwest. The home office has initiated proceedings to finalize the lease of a building here in its bid to move staff out of London offices.

Massive offices to the tune of 700,000 sq ft are in the planning stage as the government aims to move part of its operations out of London. Even as Northwest sites are being surveyed for opening offices, Warrington has already bagged the honor by making sure that sufficient efforts were taken to promote it as an ideal business location. According to John Groves, member of the Borough Council, they already initiated discussions with developers for the proposed building well in advance to avoid any delays in planning processes. This brought the location to the attention of the Home office officials even as they were looking for prime locations for relocation.

The government will bring its regional hub to the 157,000 sq ft of shared office site at Birchwood in a 25 year long lease which will soon be finalized with landlords Marshal CDP. This will be part of the huge Whitehall like development in Mayfield near Piccadilly Station in Manchester. The regional government department which will be relocated here will deal with matters relating to police, drug policies, counter terrorism, passports, and immigration. One the formalities are completed the first batch of staff will be moved here.

Speaking about the move, MP of Warrington North, Helen Jones, who was instrumental in helping win the government bid said that even if the jobs are filled by relocated existing staff members initially, the development will mean more employment opportunities here in the long run.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 11:24 am and is filed under Commerce, Plugging Things, Universe Of Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.