Staff at the Department of Home Affairs are on the move - as part of plans to meet further budget cuts.
Key services and employees will be relocated to the former Water and Sewerage Authority building in Tromode, allowing the corporate headquarters at Homefield on Woodbourne Road in Douglas to be offered for sale.
The department will see its budget cut by £692,000 in 2015-16.
There will be a reduction of 29 full-time posts, 5 per cent of the department’s total workforce, but some of these are vacancies that have already arisen through retirement and which are not being replaced. Frontline emergency services will be protected ‘as much as possible’, said the Home Affairs Minister Juan Watterson.
Among other measures is the relocation of operational staff from Lower Douglas police station to police headquarters, opening up the Lord Street site for potential redevelopment.
Subject to planning approval Tromode House will become a new base for probation staff, release Prospect House in Douglas for commercial rent, generating an income of up to £140,000 a year.
As reported by the Examiner last week, parts of Tromode House, a former children’s home run by the Department of Health and Social Care, will also be adapted as a bail and probation centre.
Further rationalisation of office and storage facilities currently leased by the DHA will save £100,000 over the next three years.
And plans for a live fire training facility will save £50,000 a year by reducing the need for firefighters to travel to the UK for training.
These measures will build on the £10.6m of savings (27.6 per cent) achieved by Home Affairs since 2007-08.