Government Building Sell-Off Shelved

The credit crunch has left a major Stormont Executive initiative floundering with the planned selling of civil service buildings halted.

The private finance initiative would have led to 65 separate government premises being taken over by the private sector.

Called Workplace 2010 and designed to support reforms across the NI Civil Service, it would have brought in a projected income of £175m.

The project was initially suspended in October last while a Department of Finance and Personnel review was carried out, before being dropped this week completely.

A spokesperson said: "It simply does not make sense to proceed, given the decline in property values and the difficulty in securing finance."

The NI Executive would have benefited in the short term by selling off its spare capacity offices for cash, but in the long term it would have paid rent and charges to the private companies who would have agreed to run and modernise the buildings.

The spokesman continued: "We regret that wider economic conditions have prevented the conclusion of the Workplace 2010 contract.

"However, the Department remains committed to the original objectives of Workplace and is actively examining alternative ways to deliver them.

"We will now seek to achieve these objectives through a number of alternative routes including consideration of conventional procurement to deliver some early phases of the programme and reviewing how the later phases might also be delivered."

(BMcC/JM)