Only one in five British adults working either full or part time would be prepared to relocate to the other end of the country if their office and job location changed, our poll has found.
- Given the choice between relocation, with some moving costs paid, and taking redundancy, 61% of adults working full or part time would rather take redundancy
- 21% said they would move to the new office if their current place of work relocated to the other end of the country
- A sizeable 18% were undecided
‘Major upheaval’?
The poll comes as coverage of the BBC’s ongoing relocation to offices and studios away from London and the South East of England continues. BBC Breakfast, BBC One’s three-hour morning programme, has recently announced that it will move to the broadcaster’s Salford base in 2012, but presenters Sian Williams and Chris Hollins (pictured) have stated that ‘personal reasons’ mean they will not follow the programme north. It is also expected that over half the show’s team will leave their jobs rather than move. In contrast, fellow presenters Bill Turnbull and Susanna Reid have said that they will be relocating.
National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary Jeremy Dear has argued against the plans, saying that ‘the move will mean a major upheaval for the staff affected’, but programme editor Alison Ford told the BBC that ‘[she] always knew there would be those who wouldn't be able to make the move for domestic reasons’. She added that while ‘Sian Williams has been key to the success of Breakfast over the past decade’, she felt ‘sure [that the programme would] go from strength to strength in its new home’.
