Upgrade to council offices in Wood Green gets go ahead

A £10.1million upgrade of Haringey Council buildings has been agreed as staff working from home during the coronavirus pandemic look to return to the office.

The investment in 48 Station Road and Alexandra House in Wood Green will fit out the offices for collaborative and hybrid working and allow essential maintenance and compliance works to be carried out.

The council is also planning a £24m revamp of the Grade 2-listed Haringey Civic Centre in Wood Green, which is currently closed because of “serious safety and structural issues”.

The £10.1m investment, which was set out in a report presented to cabinet on Tuesday, will increase the value of the two nearby office buildings and make them more “marketable” when the council moves into the refurbished civic centre in 2025. It could then allow the council to sell off River Park House and 40 Cumberland Road, also in Wood Green, and avoid the “substantial running costs” for those buildings.

The report states that council officers switched to working “almost entirely remotely” following the Covid-19 pandemic and cannot return to the authority’s offices in their current condition, as there are “various maintenance and safety issues that need to be addressed”.

It adds that although there are “clear benefits” to remote working, the council believes “a physical connection to Haringey is vital to ensuring that our staff maintain a close relationship with the residents and communities we serve”.

To enable “hybrid” working – a mixture of working from the office and other locations – the report says the existing office design and supporting IT infrastructure is in need of updating. This will involve a “significant increase in the amount of flexible space designed to enable collaborative working” and “new audio-visual technology”.

With decisions on River Park House and 40 Cumberland Road set to be made at a later date, Liberal Democrat group leader Luke Cawley-Harrison, speaking during the cabinet meeting, asked why the council was making “even more decisions” without a “holistic office building strategy” in place. He suggested the current approach was “piecemeal”.

Isidoros Diakides, cabinet member for finance and transformation, told the meeting the £10.1m investment was “about making sure that for the next three to five years we get the maximum use with the minimum cost” and “making sure there is no deterioration” of the buildings.