The Body Shop is to move its head office to Croydon, from its present base at London Bridge.

Body Shop’s head office employs around 250 staff, who oversee  around 3,000 stores in more than 60 countries for the ethically based business founded by the late Anita Roddick.

Their staff are being moved not to any of the new office developments sprouting around Croydon town centre, but into Knollys House on Addiscombe Road, near East Croydon, a building already being used by, among others, Southern Rail. So the staff may have plenty to discuss with their new neighbours when they arrive, eventually, for work each morning.

Less mundane is the announcement that the company is to create a laboratory nearby with space for up to 20 scientists.

Body Shop’s other office base is in Littlehampton, down the railway line in Sussex.

“Croydon is an exciting area, on the brink of huge change as it goes through a major regeneration programme,” Jeremy Schwartz, Body Shop’s chief executive, is supposed to have said. “It will soon have even more to offer.”

More to offer than… the Flyover? The trams? Or at least two years when the town centre will be a building site for Hammersfield and the Fairfield Halls? Or a Boozepark launched with a £3 million council loan? Or the publicly subsidised hipster hang-out on Exchange Square?

Let’s hope Body Shop’s Croydon-bound staff don’t get their hopes up too much.

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