Threat of office closures\u00a0<\/p>\n
DBT is also threatening the closure of nine regional offices outside London \u2014 with planned consultations due to begin. These include Bristol, Cambridge, Glasgow, Guildford, Ipswich, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Titchfield.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Guildford office has already closed, while the Bristol and Titchfield offices are set to shut in early 2026, according to the person cited above.<\/p>\n
These regional offices help local businesses access government support and promote trade and investment in the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote said the government has done this \u201cwithout even a nod to union consultation and without offering any kind of rationale.\u201d She called the 20 percent reduction of staff \u201ca personal disaster for many of our dedicated members as well as for the effectiveness of the department.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAny agreed future changes must be transparent and implemented carefully to help allay the serious anxiety that DBT staff are feeling,\u201d she urged.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Department for Business and Trade said no final decision had been taken on where cuts would fall, adding it is standard practice to review agreements when office leases come up for renewal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of Government plans to reshape the state and deliver our Plan for Change, DBT will support a leaner and more efficient Civil Service, helping to reduce administration costs by 15% by the end of the decade and to avoid duplication across departments,\u201d said a DBT spokesperson. \u201cIn line with these plans, we propose to reduce the Department in size, but we will look to avoid redundancies wherever possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Threat of office closures\u00a0 DBT is also threatening the closure of nine regional offices outside London \u2014 with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[627,8926,41096,144,60456,59,57,58,2923,465,50,1352,426,15732,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-127754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-david-lammy","tag-department","tag-department-for-business-and-trade","tag-exports","tag-gareth-davies","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-growth","tag-investment","tag-news","tag-services","tag-trade","tag-u-k-trade","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}