Welsh government should sell Cathays Park complex, insider says

The Welsh government should sell its Cardiff headquarters, according to a former senior civil servant.

Des Clifford, former head of the first minister’s office in Cathays Park, said a smaller office should be set up in Cardiff Bay near the Senedd instead.

His comments come after new figures show that on average just 19% of staff based in Cathays Park worked in the office each day in March.

First Minister Eluned Morgan has previously said the government won’t be able to “justify” keeping its offices open if staff continue to stay away.

Before Covid struck, around 2,500 people worked at Cathays Park every day.

However, since the pandemic most have continued to work from home.

The most recent attendance figures, for March, show that on average the number of people attending the Cathays Park office each day was 576 (19%).

The highest daily attendance was 799 (26%).

Speaking to BBC-produced Newyddion S4C, Des Clifford said the days of staff working in the office five days a week were over and the time had come to sell Cathays Park.

“It’s an ugly and unfriendly building,” he said.

“I would close it down and perhaps sell it to the university or somebody else and set up a new office in the Bay so that the government and the Senedd are side by side.”

This would provide “a greater opportunity for mixing between civil servants and government and the Senedd, which might, in certain ways, create a certain kind of coherence,” he added.

The Cathays Park complex consists of two buildings joined by a bridge.

The older building, dating from the 1930s and Grade II listed, originally housed the UK government’s Welsh Board of Health.

After the position of secretary of state for Wales was created in the 1960s, it became home to the Welsh Office.

The newer building, completed in 1979, provided additional office space for a Welsh Office that had acquired an increasing range of responsibilities.

The two-building complex became the home of Wales’ fledgling devolved government 20 years later, in 1999.

The Welsh government has a total of 20 sites across Wales including 15 so-called “core offices”.

The costs of running these offices in 2023-24 was £24.5m.

Across the Welsh government’s estate in March the average daily attendance was 16%.

Asked what should happen to those offices, Mr Clifford said there were “all sorts of awkward questions that arise if you have an office in Llandudno Junction and you have another one in Caernarfon”.

“Are the two justifiable in the circumstances that we’re describing when you’ve got two buildings 30 miles (48km) apart?

“The same set of questions arise between Penllergaer in Swansea and Carmarthen, which I think again, is about 30 miles distance between the two.”

The Welsh government expects its staff to spend 40% of the week – the equivalent of two days – in the office.

Last week First Minister Eluned Morgan told the Senedd: “Clearly, there will come a point where you have to say ‘if you don’t turn up, we cannot justify keeping this particular office open’.”

A review of the government’s Powys offices – in Llandrindod Wells and Newtown – is already underway.