Northern Powerhouse Office to close

For goodness sake!

Northern industrial areas don't tend to vote Conservative - why waste money on them?

You would have to look into the reasons behind the closing of this office before making knee-jerk assumptions and comments.

Is it unreasonable then to expect a Northern Powerhouse to have a Northern office? (Although for some of us Sheffield is barely Northern)

rosesarered this apparently is the reason: 'Staff were told that the department was to create a combined central HQ and policy centre in London, so that government ministers could access policy expertise more easily, and that the Sheffield office would not be viable once all policy roles had moved to the capital.' Read into that what you will. As trisher says, is it unreasonable to expect the Northern Powerhouse to have an office in somewhere approaching the north of the country?

And in this day and age of skype and video conferencing not a valid reason at all.

Northern Powerhouse office based in London? Irony alert, anyone?

Haha! trisher, I agree about Sheffield hardly beimg north. When I moved there from Edinburgh, I had never, till then, lived so far south! I enjoyed my time there.

"For some of us Sheffield us barely northern"! Of course we are! We are a suburb of Leeds! Hadn't you heard? It's the only way we can justify our assistance these days!!

I don't live in the area designated as the Northern Power House but I am really interested in how it is going. Moving offices to London for the reason given seems ludicrous.Can government ministers not use email, video conferencing or an old school telephone to access expertise? I hope the people of Sheffield are questioning their MP about this.

Existence, not assistance!

Sorry Greyduster just being flippant. Of course Sheffield is Northern and of course it is in God's own county. Do you suppose the North is to now become anywhere past Watford?

Trisher, I didn't think you were being flippant - it is what a lot of people think. And I wasn't being flippant either - that's what we it's beginning to feel like here!

During the General election campaign I heard a politician proudly boast that he had visited the most northerly constituency in the UK - Hull.
No such place as Scotland then.

Thanks Badenkate for supplying the reason the office will close ( knew that somebody would know the reason).
I can see that having policy advisors etc close would be a good reason to have the office in the centre of things, London, but in that case it was a waste of money to set it up in Sheffield in the first place.You expect these things to be thought about beforehand!

Although I do see the irony of the Northern Powerhouse Office in the South.?

History of Northen Powerhouse idea.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northern-powerhouse-how-began-what-9879478

They never meant it. If Osborne wanted to help the North he would relocate a few 10s of civil servant jobs out of expensive London and into cities that could really do with those jobs.

He'd have to drag them by their feet while their finger nails gouged grooves in the Whitehall tarmac, JessM! I remember the cried of woe there were when the BBC transferred staff to Manchester!

Sheffield is 165 miles south of my house!

How can the Northern Powerhouse have no base in the north? I agree with the others about Skye and video conferencing. There seems very little argument against it, except for MP's and civil servants being afraid to cut the ties that bind them to Westminster.

The Northern Power House seems to be the government's idea of irony. In Greater Manchester, we're to have a Mayor, despite a public vote against this very recently. If Osborne wanted to help the North he'd ensure there was a northern powerhouse office in the , well, North. He'd also ensure that rather than a railway that reduced journey time to London by 10 minutes, any available cash was spent on improving the infra structure in what is laughingly referred to as "the north".

I think that as Westminster is going to close for refurbishment that parliament should move up to Sheffield. Then ministers will be close to the Northern Powerhouse expertise.

The strange thing is that Sheffield was only made the second city of the Northern Powerhouse last October. It hasn't taken them long to change their minds.
County Durham is being asked what it wants to get out of the Northern Powerhouse. We have all had questionnaires. If this contempt for the idea had been known about before now, perhaps some answers might have been different.
Not that it's a referendum. We are all being blackmailed by Osborne.

Where are all these people going to live in London? As if London needs an extra 247 jobs.

Yes Manchester has been doing very well without a mayor hasn't it. Fantastic pubic transport system, able to function well with only low numbers commuting into centre by car.

Here in North Wales we would also benefit if the North - in particular Manchester and Liverpool had a bigger share of the economic activity of the UK. N Wales does not have a big city - and its population of about 4000,000 K is spread mostly along the coastal strip.
One of the issues is that there are only limited through train services between N Wales and these 2 important cities.
In an interesting (stupid? spiteful?) move the Westminster government seem to be intent on putting the spoke into train services and making it more difficult to have integrated cross-border trains services, rather than easier.

The rule seems to be if you want it, it would be useful, or it might work you won't get it. If you don't want it, it will be useless and won't work you're going to get it wether you like it or not. If I was cynical I would suspect that they weren't interested in anything Up-North!