We've taken a big step towards that, announcing last week, our agreement to purchase Capital One's Loxley House on Station Street.

This means that we will be able to move out of a number of old, unsuitable and expensive city centre buildings and move to a single headquarters building that will have a number of advantages for us and for the citizens of Nottingham.

Loxley House will be cheaper and more efficient to run; a single modern, building will mean we save massively on energy, maintenance and facilities management costs and also helping us to become a carbon neutral Council by 2016.

The City Council will run more efficiently; decisions will be made and action taken more quickly and time lost by staff and citizens moving between different buildings will reduce dramatically. 

Our moving to Loxley House will give a significant boost to the regeneration of the railway station and the south of the city centre.

The money, time and energy saved will be spent on improving services to citizens.

Having found a new headquarters building, our priority now is continuing to invest in the buildings we use in neighbourhoods.  The Clifton Cornerstone and the Mary Potter Centre in Hyson Green are good examples of the kind of buildings that we want colleagues in neighbourhoods to work in, and our citizens to visit whenever they wish to access services in person.

We want more services to be available in neighbourhoods so we're working on plans for similar buildings in Bulwell and in St Ann's. 

Our decision to move our headquarters operations to Loxley House is based on a sound business case, allowing for purchase and transition costs, that predicts a net contribution to the Council's budget within a small number of years.

The city centre buildings we leave will be sold for redevelopment, releasing capital for the Council and helping to regenerate the areas they are in and to create new jobs in Nottingham.

Leader of Nottingham City Council, Councillor Jon Collins, said:

"Our business case shows how cost effective the purchase of Loxley House will be. It makes enormous sense as a stand alone investment, it will act as a catalyst for regeneration of the city centre and the Southside area, and it will make it much easier for our customers to get access to services they need. Our current office accommodation in the city centre is old, inefficient and in many cases, not designed to be office space – all this makes it very expensive to run. We expect to make immediate savings when we move to Loxley House. Once this happens we can begin to develop our plans to similarly improve the way we provide our services in neighbourhoods."