Government Legal Department sets up Salford office
A team of 120 lawyers will be based within 6,000 sq ft of HMRC space at Three New Bailey.
The Government Legal Department has agreed a sub-lease on the space that will run until December 2026.
In 2018, HMRC signed to a 25-year lease on the entirety of the 157,000 sq ft Three New Bailey, developed by English Cities Fund.
It will now give up some of its space, with GLD poised to move in this spring.
GLD is the government’s principal legal adviser and is made up of up of nearly 3,000 staff, 2,500 of these being lawyers.
The department’s North West expansion complements existing offices in Bristol, Leeds, and London.
“This is an exciting moment for the Government Legal Department,” said Susanna McGibbon, treasury solicitor and permanent secretary of the GLD.
“Establishing a new office in the North West is an important step in us becoming truly national and creating unique career opportunities across the country.”
I regard this as a form of Levelling Up, as it is bringing well paid jobs to Mcr , and it will mean these staff will require somewhere to live and thus boost the housing market.
By Anonymous
Depends if they will be working remote and communitng in from London 1-2 days a week.
By Anonymous
Quite interesting that this area is attracting a cluster of law related firms
By Anon
It’s not levelling up. It’s just delivering more middle class people to Manchester, further exacerbating existing inequalities inside greater Manchester whilst also worsening the economic gap between Manchester and Liverpool, further undermining its own legal sector through government pump priming elsewhere.
When the UK government stops pointing at Manchester and saying “the north”, actual levelling up might commence. There’s no justification for placing this in Manchester.
By Jeff
‘Anon’, they’re moving from The Old Bailey to the New Bailey. Quite apt given that it was the site of a prison and is near a cluster of courts.
By Albert
Excellent news on top of the 2500 civil service jobs moving north to First Street. We need much more of this if levelling up is to mean anything but we’ll done Manchester.
By Anonymous
To answer Jeff directly, clusters matter. This will be round the corner from a magic circle law firm, Freshfield’s non-London hub, and other well regarded law firms. Is government required to choose places that don’t have the right pools of highly skilled Labour. It’s also round the corner from Victoria and so is accessible from both Liverpool and Leeds (post Transpennine upgrade) in less that 45 mins. Everyone was quite rightly super cynical when the Treasury went to Darlington.
By Rich X