Moving on up

If Muhammad won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Muhammad. Or so goes a saying popularised by Francis Bacon. It seems Andrew Mitchell, the Development Secretary, has taken this to heart and decided to move his entire Department — DfID — closer to the Foreign Office, MoD and, of course, No 10.

After years of relishing its location — both geographically and functionally — a distance away from Whitehall, where all the other government departments are located, DfID will, I’m told, move to 22-26 Whitehall, next to Horse Guard’s Parade.

The key point is the cost saving involved — at the moment DfID’s current building at 1 Palace St costs around £10m a year whereas 22-26 Whitehall will cost around £3.5 million a year. And as the new location is a Government freehold building, whereas 1 Palace Street is a building DfID rents from a commercial landlord, there are other advantages.