New home for Competition watchdog

THE Competition Commission has decided to stay in the West End after scouring the capital for more than nine months. It has signed a 15-year lease for 80,000 square feet at Victoria House on Bloomsbury Square, the former Liverpool & Victoria Friendly Society building of 1932.

The search took the Commission as far as Docklands in the east and the futuristic Ark in Hammersmith on the other side of the capital, but in the end the Commission decided it had to be near the heart of the legal community in Holborn. The new building will be home to all the tribunals and hearings relating to its investigations as well as 250 permanent staff.

Although the neo-classical facade of the building will remain, the interior has been ripped out by German owner Garbe to be replaced with modern floor plates and a central atrium. The Commission hopes to move in at the beginning of next year.

Garbe had been looking for as much as £55 a square foot but the rent is understood to be less than £50. Recruitment agency Michael Page International has 33,000 square feet in the building and a further 100,000 square feet of office space is available.