Archived press release

Date Published: 10/09/07

Aylesbury Vale District Council is getting set to move from its Exchange Street offices in Aylesbury to new accommodation at Gatehouse Road. The move will take place from Friday 14 September, with council officers and councillors taking their sea...

Aylesbury Vale District Council is getting set to move from its Exchange Street offices in Aylesbury to new accommodation at Gatehouse Road.

The move will take place from Friday 14 September, with council officers and councillors taking their seats at their new desks on Monday 17 September.

Most visitors to the council will not be affected by the move as the Customer Service Centre remains at 66 High Street, along with key front-line services such as benefits, housing and leisure.

The new office building, called The Gateway, will provide improved office space for back-office services such as communications, personnel and democratic services, including electoral registration. The telephone and fax numbers for accessing these services remain unchanged.

All committee meetings which currently take place in Exchange Street, such as development control, licensing and scrutiny, as well as cabinet meetings, will move to the new offices. Full council meetings will continue to be held at the Civic Centre until June 2008.

Once the Exchange Street offices have been vacated, the building will be demolished, initially to create a temporary car park. This will help ensure an adequate supply of parking spaces for workers and visitors to the town centre, especially in the run up to Christmas.

The temporary car park will eventually make way for the multi-million pound Waterside retail development. A new town centre food store is currently proposed for the site.

Earlier this year AVDC gave the go-ahead for officers to develop a detailed design for the construction of a new office block and the refurbishment of an existing building at Gatehouse Road to provide enough space to accommodate staff from its Friars Square offices. The potential move from Friars Square will be considered by the council later this year.

No extra money for the relocation project is needed from council tax as funding has already been set aside in the council’s capital programme.

The current Exchange Street office building started out as an electricity showroom. Ramsay Macdonald, the then Prime Minister, opened the building in April 1931.

It ceased to be an electricity showroom in 1967, and has been used by AVDC as offices from 1996 to the present day. Councillor Netta Glover, Chairman of the Council, recently hosted a visit from former electricity board employees.

Councillor John Cartwright, Leader of the Council, said: “We are looking forward to the move and are confident that the improved office space will help staff to continue to provide even better services to the people of Aylesbury Vale. As with any major move there may be a slight disruption while staff are changing offices. We have put plans in place to deal with this but would ask residents to bear with us over the coming days while the move takes place.”