City Hall relocation – the Assembly verdict

Full occupation of the new City Hall at Royal Docks was originally scheduled for October 2021. The Mayor and London Assembly took permanent residence in the new building in March this year – a delay of five months.

The GLA Oversight Committee has investigated the relocation and written to the Mayor of London highlighting concerns about the process. It has also made some recommendations going forward to prevent similar issues in the future.

The cost savings initially suggested appear to have been misleading. The true savings have been established as £37 million over a five-year period not £61 million, as originally claimed by the Mayor.

The Committee was also concerned at the expense, nearly £100,000, incurred to hold early meetings at the new City Hall before it was ready to open and the impact these had on completing the building works and subsequent relocation.

Today the Committee has published a letter which highlights these concerns. The recommendations include:

• Decision making at the GLA must be based on robust financial analysis. The GLA, including the Mayor’s Office, must adopt a more open and transparent approach to the communication of savings. The true savings have been established as £37 million over a five-year period and this figure should be used in all future communications from the Mayor and GLA.
• The Committee encourages the Mayor to publish redacted versions of the detail to the Mayoral Decision on the settlement of dilapidation costs with More London (MD2843) to support open and transparent decision making at the GLA.
• In future staff welfare should be a key consideration when trialling new facilities.
• There is a continuing lack of engagement with the London Assembly on key issues that impact its work which must be addressed going forward.
• The Committee would like to understand what early planning the GLA is doing now in advance of the end of the lease at Union Street to ensure a similar situation is avoided.

Former Chair of the GLA Oversight Committee, Caroline Pidgeon AM, said:

“An overall theme of the City Hall relocation was the ‘aggressive’ timescale of the project, which appeared unwarranted to us, given the success of the temporary accommodation at Union Street. While no one could have predicted with any certainty the impact of the pandemic, such an unrealistic timescale resulted in unnecessary uncertainty and confusion for staff.

“We also question whether the £100,000, incurred to hold the early meetings at the new City Hall, before it was finished, was a good use of public money. We await the Mayor’s response to that question.

“In the new building, GLA employees are expected to be in the office 2-3 days per week, but with allocated desks for each team limited to 10 per cent of the size of the team, we are left wondering whether this expectation is realistic, given the limited number of drop-in desks.

“And most importantly, the claim of a £61 million saving over 5 years was clearly misleading – with the real saving somewhere in the vicinity of £37 million.

“Now we have taken residence in the new building, we need to get on with the job of holding the Mayor to account and all these issues need to be transparently addressed. We look forward to the Mayor’s response to our questions and recommendations on the relocation of the home of London’s government.”