There is no sound business reason or necessity to close Peterborough Land Registry. It's a hatchet job by a consultant. 3 of the 5 offices facing closure are consistently in the top 4 offices for productivity & efficiency. Our customers can't understand why the Board are bent on wrecking such an efficient department (other countries come here to learn from our success!). We can only assume they hope to protect their 6-figure salaries & bonuses @ the expense of the service we provide.
Before the housing market crash, our main income came from all those sales & re-mortgages, so our Board (+ Government) decided to offer 'carboot' prices for projects to major landowners & encourage voluntary registration of land. Now, we still have a lot of work in our offices, but the majority are these cut-price projects, whose fees do not begin to cover the cost of the work. This work is often very complex & difficult. If this office is closed, we not only lose jobs, but highly skilled specialist staff & knowledge of local legal problems, etc. It costs £30,000 per person to train someone to a basic level in this work & the Board already plan to recruit 150 per year elsewhere ... they will cost us, as taxpayers, far more to train, than to pay the people they already employ here.
Peterborough has lost too many skilled jobs already (HMRC, Thomas Cook, Pearl have either left or drastically reduced their staff levels): the Passport office is @ risk too. In a few years, Peterborough will be a jobs ghetto, dependent on poorly-paid low-skilled work for the mjority of vacancies. that means les spare cash to spend locally, less money coming from Council tax to pay for services & more money supporting people who are out of work. This has a domino effect, causing more businesses to close & costing more job losses. The ones who won't lose are the overpaid directors, who will shed crocodile tears for the media & pocket more money in pensions than we will ever see in wages.

I have read and researched this story for sometime now and it appears a little confusing.

It seems to me that Peterborough is being sacrificed purely for political reasons.

1. Land Registry Peterborough is in the top 5 best performing in the UK.

2. The other Land Registry's due for closure are also quite high ranking performers as well.

3. All land registry's due for closure are in the East and South East. Non are closing in the midlands or Northern area's.

4. Poorer performing Land Registry's Like Hull and Leicester have not been chosen for closure.

5. Peterborough apparently can stomach the job losses better than say Hull or Leicester.

6. Which is why it appears to have been chosen. So to protect jobs up north and poorer performing Land Registry's.

Lost of good stuff in your post PCSLR
As a consultant I dont like the term "hatchet job" The consultant would have been given a remit or instruction on what the "employer/body/ buisness" wanted and how best to deliver it.

The rest of your comment seems quite intersting.
The first thing is we now live in a "cut price / carboot environment. This I am affraid to say is across all industries and sectors. The average person just does not want to pay! car insurance , home insurance , on line banking , online retailing prove this.

I agree with your comment regarding the loss of skilled jobs in Peterborough the constant farming of jobs to India / Russia / Africa has left huge holes in the local economy.

As I put in post last week a well paid job in Peterborough looking at the vacant positions on offer is about £18-22k

The council needs to desperatley try and attract or reinact the policies of the old Developemnt Corp and attract job companies with good well paying jobs.

We have slowly become a backwater/dessert inregards to attracting top quality employers.

This is why roughly a 1000+ people leave the area daily to work in London myself included

It would be interesting to do actually do a survey in the business page/s of this paper with some real "industry leaders" and see what they thought were the issues

I would have no problems giving my views

I agree with your comment about use of consultants A de L; from reading the business case it would appear the decision was made and then 'valid' reasons were made up to support the decision. And should it all backfire the team employed to axe a quarter of the work force and offices would take the blame and fire.

There are lots of anomalies in the business case - which now need to be addressed bfore the consultation period ends so that alternative view points canbe taken on board. Naively staff are hoping that when the board say there is a 3 month consultation period for all interested parties to voice their thoughts, opinions and alternative plans - these considerations - which will all oppose savage job cuts and office closures will be taken into account.

The simple solution is to move staff to a smaller and more economical and environmentally friendly building. And by maintaining a presence in Peterborough and the other sites in the south and south east Land Registry can continue to support the local infrastructure and economy.

This story is certainly getting a lot of coverage, i do respect that it is in relation to the loss of 300 jobs and i am sorry to hear of the impending losses but lets not forget consultants, reviews, it all sounds very familiar of late with 400 job losses from the city council last year, reviews, restructures or evaluations, call it what you may it all amounts to the same result. With probably the same this year with the remainder probably being outsourced to the private sector. Other major employers taking the same cost cutting action. It appears that maybe Peterborough's good times are coming to an end. Good luck with the fight.Consultation in cases like this normally refers to decisions have already been made by the powers that be and then telling the staff affected. I suggest they Utilise the tools at hand such as the 'freedom of information act', you may be suprised what has to be disclosed, choose the wording of your questions carefully. Unfortunatley at the end of the day it's their train set and they will play with it as they want. Good luck.

I don't know why all these leftie union card-carriers are protesting, no job is for life any more. Get on your bikes and look for work. There was even a group of pensioners with their own banner - mother of mercy!

We were supporting public services that's why. Call centres may have their uses - usually to keep prices down - but at what price? Terms and conditions for staff are usually worse - with fixed term contracts etc and customer service can only suffer. The pensioners were supporting us because they remember their parent's or even their own experience before the welfare state etc.

Yes, I belong to a union, nut I have never been a 'leftie', as your insulting comment phrased it. It's dreadful enough to lose your job, because your company fails (despite its workers' efforts), but it is unacceptable to lose public service jobs, because the financial industry continue to take lucrative bonuses (effectively out of our pockets)and your department is renowned for its efficiency, customer service and IT success. I'm not asking for a job for life, just for fair treatment and justice for ordinary hard-working people. We should not be punished for the crimes of the greedy super-rich, who caused this recession by their negligence and mismanagement of our money.