{"id":703453,"date":"2026-07-21T14:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703453\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T14:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:02:10","slug":"whitehall-officials-offered-move-to-no-10-north-in-manchester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703453\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitehall officials offered move to No 10 North in Manchester"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Civil servants working for government departments based in London have been offered relocation packages to encourage them to move to the North of England, the BBC understands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It comes as the first details are emerging about the new No 10 North which has already started work, according to sources close to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The BBC has been told that the Northern branch of Downing Street will be overseen by cabinet minister and ally of Burnham, Louise Haigh.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Haigh, who is the first secretary of state, is thought to have been asked to lead a new Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (OPMC), which will give her control of key decision- making bodies across government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The OPMC will include No 10, No 10 North and teams within the Cabinet Office. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/questions-statements.parliament.uk\/written-statements\/detail\/2026-07-21\/hlws298\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Announcing the changes,, external<\/a> which will also include an AI Taskforce, Leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Angela Smith said No 10 North would be a &#8220;dominant driver of the UK&#8217;s economy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is understood that the initial location of No 10 North will be Heron House in central Manchester, in the same building which houses offices for the intelligence service GCHQ. Specialist police officers have been seen guarding the building.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is likely that the longer term base for No 10 North will be at a new government &#8220;Digital Campus&#8221; which is under construction in the Ancoats area of Manchester. It is not due for completion until 2032.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, a good indication of what it could look like comes from a new report, released on Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The blueprint <a href=\"https:\/\/re-state.co.uk\/publications\/building-no-10-north\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has been authored, external<\/a> by the Re:State think tank which Burnham was involved with until he stepped down as mayor of Greater Manchester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Civil servants working for government departments based in London have been offered relocation packages to encourage them to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703453","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=703453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}