Met considers selling its iconic headquarters to deal with budget gap

The Metropolitan Police Service is considering selling New Scotland Yard, its iconic headquarters since 1967, to plug the £500m hole in its £3.5bn annual budget.

Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey revealed the plans at a meeting with the Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime today (October 30).

It is understood the force could move to a smaller HQ, the Curtis Green building, near Embankment if it sold its current building but the force is not expected to make a final decision until next month.

New Scotland Yard, in Victoria, was purpose-built to be the force headquarters. Deputy Commissioner Mackey told the meeting it cost £11m a year to run and would cost £50m to make it “fit for purpose”.

A force spokesman said: “Scotland Yard has moved several times before, from Whitehall Place to Great Scotland Yard in 1875, to the Norman Shaw building in 1890 and to this building in 1967.

“New Scotland Yard costs millions of pounds a year to run and we would need to invest about £50million over the next few years to make it fit for longer term operational use. However, no final decisions have been made.”

Deputy Commissioner Mackey also said the force would need to sell roughly a third of its estate to cope with the budget cut.

The force spokesman added: “By any measure the Met has a huge estate. We currently have 900,000 square metres of space across London, ranging from operational buildings to support buildings, to specialist assets, across London boroughs.

“By better utilising that space and making more use of facilities across London we can reduce that space to 600,000 square metres by 2015/16.

“We won’t keep older buildings any longer than we need to - some buildings are getting old and the cost of keeping and maintaining them is considerable.”

PoliceOracle.com will be covering the potential sale of New Scotland Yard again when the Met makes a final decision.