HMRC has signed a 25-year lease for its Manchester regional hub with the tax authority planning to move employees into the building by 2022, with the building becoming the eleventh lease that HMRC has signed out of the 13 regional centres
The government has agreed to lease 157,153 sq ft at the New Bailey development in Greater Manchester, which will accommodate civil servants from 2022.
HMRC will take over the whole of the seven storey 3 New Bailey development. This office will be the initial phase of the HMRC Manchester regional centre. Additional capacity for around 2,500 staff will be retained at Trinity Bridge House as a transitional site until 2027-2028, when the second phase of the regional centre is expected to open.
Steven Boyd, HMRC Estates Director, said: ‘The New Bailey development will provide HMRC with a state-of-the-art facility fit for a modern tax authority. Signing the lease is a significant, long-term commitment to the Greater Manchester region.
‘This is one of our final regional centres to be announced. Staff are already working from the first regional centre in Croydon and are discovering how the building supports significant improvements in ways of working and collaboration. All the regional centres will provide our staff with the quality, digital working environments needed to deliver a better service to the taxpayer.’
The Manchester hub forms part of HMRC’s office restructure project where thousands of HMRC staff will relocate to a small number of locations from the current 137 local offices and centres across the country. Up to 6,000 redundancies are expected due to the geographic relocations.
Moving to regional centres will save more than £300m up to 2025, with annual cost savings of around £90m from 2026, while improving customer service and modernising how HMRC work.
Report by Amy Austin
