New government department seeking permanent base

The Office for Place is currently renting desks at Stoke-on-Trent's Civic Centre

A new government department has begun the search for a permanent base in Stoke-on-Trent.

The Office for Place has been leasing desks at Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Civic Centre, and announced last year that it would be based in the city.

Its brief involves work to ensure new housing developments across the country are well-designed.

The organisation is set to move into permanent headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent later this year and has launched a recruitment drive for an £80,000-a-year chief executive and other top officers.

The new roles will be the latest government jobs to come to Stoke-on-Trent, with hundreds of Home Office workers now based in the city.

Those jobs are currently based in Two Smithfield in the city centre, but will eventually move into a new building on the Smithfield development.

According to government figures, there were a total of 1,710 civil service workers in Stoke-on-Trent on 31 March this year, compared with 1,245 in 2021.

A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) spokesperson said: "We are committed to keeping the Office for Place in Stoke-on-Trent, and work is already under way to find a permanent office location.

"At the same time, there is ongoing recruitment for various roles, all of which will be based in the office."

According to the advert for the new Office for Place jobs, the organisation will "support the creation and stewardship of places that are beautiful, sustainable, popular, and healthy".

As well as hiring its first chief executive, the Office for Place is also recruiting a head of finance and corporate services, head of digital placemaking tools, head of HR, procurement and project manager and four senior planner roles, all of whom will be based in Stoke-on-Trent.

One of the roles of the new chief executive will be to oversee a proposed new national accreditation scheme for design codes.

While the new workers are initially being recruited into the MHCLG, the Office for Place is due to become fully independent of the department this autumn.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.