The Committee for Employment and Learning welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Strategic Review of Government Office Accommodation - Interim Report commissioned by the Department of Finance and Personnel.

We welcome this strategic review and regard it as a very important cross-cutting policy review which was agreed as part of the Programme for Government. The Committee agreed to set out their over-arching views rather than complete the questionnaire and these are given below under two headings, general principles and areas relating to the Department for Employment and Learning per se.

(a) The consensus of the Committee for Employment and Learning was that it supports, subject to the considerations mentioned below, a dispersal policy of civil servants throughout Northern Ireland for the medium to long-term benefits as encapsulated in the following extract from the Regional Development Strategy 2001.

(b) Members are fully aware of the up-front costs, but wish to see due recognition given to the longer term benefits in areas such as transport, environment, health, equality, and targeting social need. These also need to be more fully assessed, quantified and taken into account alongside the cost per job.

One question which arises, is whether if positions were moved out of Greater Belfast would the persons affected move their residence? If they did not then there would still be commuter traffic flows, simply in a different direction. At the same time, given current budgetary pressures the above up-front costs may be considerable and cannot be ignored. We note the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study of the movement of 280 jobs to Londonderry. The total cost of this was £12-17m or about £50,000 per job relocated (all this in mid 1990's prices). Compared to IDB or LEDU figures a costly way of creating jobs in certain areas.

(c) Furthermore, the Committee notes the following two comments within the interim report as areas where improvements will offer cost savings in the future and assist in implementing future policy.

(a) The Committee fully recognises that the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL) has a reasonable spread of staff across Northern Ireland but supports and encourages a further detailed examination of staff dispersal throughout the province. In both the Departmental brief of 4 December 2001 and the Minister's oral response to a supplementary question in the Assembly, the Minister has committed to build on the current position.

(b) The Committee also supports the Department's aspiration of having one building for the Departmental core to reduce lost time, wasted resources and improve the efficiency of its operations. We would wish this to be further examined within the outworkings of this review.