The Department for Education is to close its Croydon office, with the potential loss of “dozens” of jobs.
The DfE’s Croydon office is one of six facing closure, the others being in Exeter, Leeds, Newcastle, Peterborough and Watford.
But Croydon’s office, in Trafalgar House on Bedford Park, East Croydon, is to be among the first to close, by June this year.
Staff were advised of the closure plans earlier this week. Their trades union, the Public and Commercial Services Union, the PCS, is expected to hold a consultative ballot for industrial action as early as next week.
Over the past decade, Croydon has become a hub for government offices, with HM Revenue and Customs and the Home Office taking up entire blocks of new offices in Ruskin Square, next to East Croydon Station, as policy has been to move the staff and functions away from Whitehall and central London to less expensive locations.
The DfE’s Croydon operation has been much smaller scale, sharing a building with the Land Registry.
The PCS’s action is likely to focus on finding alternative positions for those DfE employees in Croydon displaced by the office closure.
Croydon has one of the worst unemployment rates in the whole of London. Figures from last October showed 6.6% of adults in Croydon were claiming Jobseekers Allowance.
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Does this mean another office building being converted to more flats, which Croydon doesn’t need, or will the Land Registry be left rattling around in an over-large building (for their needs)?
No.
And probably not.