UK accounting watchdog in talks to leave City of London

The UK’s accounting watchdog is in talks to move its headquarters out of the City of London to Canary Wharf or Stratford, as its plans to relocate staff to a second office in Birmingham face delays.

The Financial Reporting Council is set to leave its office in the City by the end of the year with new locations in the Docklands and Stratford near the Olympic Park under consideration, according to people familiar with the matter.

The relocation to east London would leave just one major City regulator in the heart of the UK’s historic financial district: the Prudential Regulation Authority in the Bank of England.

Talks between the FRC and the Government Property Agency, the body responsible for managing government properties, are continuing and a final mutually agreed decision on its new headquarters will be made in the coming months, the people added.

It comes as the audit watchdog’s plans to relocate staff from London to a second office in Birmingham in the West Midlands this year face delays.

In 2022, ministers chose Birmingham to be the home of a new audit regulator as part of plans to shift officials out of London. However, the scheme to replace the FRC with a new, more powerful Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority has stalled.

The FRC still plans to open its own premises in Birmingham, one person said. The regulator’s headcount has more than doubled from fewer than 200 to about 470 since 2018.

According to the FRC’s 2024-25 budget, published in December, about 5 per cent of current staff were due to relocate to a new Birmingham office by the end of the financial year in March. It also said it had started to recruit personnel in Birmingham.

“However, given the slowdown in our planned headcount growth compared to the original business case assumption, the pace of expansion into the Birmingham office may be slower as a result,” it said.

Some staff have since January been temporarily based in the West Midlands headquarters of the Office for Product Safety and Standards, the national product regulator, one person said.

The move would bring the FRC closer to other regulators, such as the Competition and Markets Authority in Canary Wharf, and the Financial Conduct Authority in Stratford.

However, a number of high-profile corporate tenants have opted to move out of Canary Wharf in recent years, including HSBC and law firm Clifford Chance, as companies downsize while they adapt to the rise of homeworking.

As a result, Canary Wharf Group has sought to diversify the estate from its traditional focus on financial services offices by adding residential buildings, hospitality venues and retail outlets.

In his Budget, chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced CWG would receive a £118mn loan from a government housing infrastructure fund to support developing a life-sciences centre, a healthcare diagnostic facility and several hundred new homes.

The FRC declined to comment.