December 9, 2014
New Scotland Yard sold to Emirati investors for £370 million
The buyer of the Metropolitan Police’s Scotland Yard headquarters building has been confirmed as Abu Dhabi Financial Group (ADFG). The sale of the home of the Met as part of a huge shake-up of the police’s estate was first announced last year and last month news emerged that a buyer had been found, although details of the sale were withheld. The sale of the site to the Emirati investment group for £370 million is reported to be some £120 million more than the original asking price set by London Mayor Boris Johnson. The current building has been home to the Met since 1967 but the Mayor’s office felt the sale and freeing up of resources could benefit the force’s frontline operations. The sale is part of a wider shake-up of the police estate in London which has already seen the sale of 32 buildings, raising £125 million. The restructuring programme is expected to complete in 2016 and is estimated to save around £60 million each year in running costs.
September 4, 2014
The myths and the memes of public sector purchasing waste
by Justin Miller • Comment, Facilities management, Public Sector, Workplace design
There has always been a certain degree of skepticism within the UK’s business community about the way the public sector goes about buying goods and services. Some of it is justified but some is unfair. The efforts of successive governments to address the problem demonstrates that there is always a will to improve things. So while a recent BBC Panorama documentary highlighted claims from one report that the NHS loses billions each year thanks to a range of errors and fraud in its procurement processes, we might also ask whether an equivalent private sector organisation with an annual budget of £109 billion would not also be open to a wide range of eye-wateringly expensive failures and inefficiencies. Unfortunately there is a tendency in the media to want to expose ‘waste’ in public sector purchasing, which can politicise what are perfectly reasonable decisions, when you examine them.
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