EXCLUSIVE: British Airways to mothball its Waterside head office

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• Lady London says:

  29 Jul29 July 12:06

  Good move by BA.
  If forced to move to the Hatton Cross building, if working fulltime there I would be a bit worried about exposure to paint and chemical vapours seeping up through the building. Sometimes locations with issues like this are approved as offices if theyre going to be used as training centres or similar where the same people are not there fulltime.

  The Excel centre is on a very polluted site and similar restrictions applied there.

  • Oh! Matron! says:

    29 Jul29 July 12:30

    So long as they don’t change the outside of the building. I love the brutalism architecture, especially when staying across the road at the HGI

    • The Savage Squirrel says:

      29 Jul29 July 13:38

      Think you’re the only one that does 😀 .

    • BlueThroughCrimp says:

      29 Jul29 July 14:09

      Agreed! I do like a good bit of brutalism.

      • Josh says:

        29 Jul29 July 17:37

        It looks apocalyptically awful. What were the architects of the 60s and 70s smoking?

        • Brian says:

          29 Jul29 July 18:24

          Paint and chemicals, presumably.

        • Lady London says:

          30 Jul30 July 12:36

          Speaking of smoking, in the 80’s you couldn’t see fully across the computer room of one of my clients (music business) for pot smoke.

  • Desk Pilot says:

    29 Jul29 July 12:46

    I worked in TBC back when a lot of the IT department were there (1996 – 2000), and a call centre on the lower floors. There were workshops on the ground floor with the paintshop over the way in TBJ. The canteen in TBJ had a great view of the paintshop floor.

    I don’t think I suffered any ill effects, cough.

• George K says:

  29 Jul29 July 12:29

  Regretting not checking out the Heritage Centre when I had the chance…

  • Andrew says:

    29 Jul29 July 14:11

    I was at Waterside for an event last summer and stayed around for a bit at the end and had a look in the heritage centre (just a couple of weeks before the Queen made her centenary visit) and it was really interesting. There’s also some sets of Concorde seats in an informal meeting area in the ‘street’. Plus a mini Waitrose. I was very envious of those working there….

• Steve says:

  29 Jul29 July 12:57

  Good lord that’s an ugly building (Technical Block C)

  • insider says:

    29 Jul29 July 13:12

    it’s basically just a car park with an office on the roof. Good views though!

    • Beetle says:

      29 Jul29 July 14:37

      . . . And during a snowy winter the entrance/exit ramp is a great resource for improving your sledging and skiing skills but ensure the safety department have installed the padded safety barriers at the run off area.

• Beetle says:

  29 Jul29 July 14:26

  Waterside, a beautiful showcase headquarters populated by a very privileged group of people.
  A high end small supermarket and a gym included plus more coffee shops than the high street. When ever I’ve visited I’ve been impressed by the very laid back atmosphere.
  Unfortunately I believe the remote showcase fostered a style of management very removed from the front end operation, producing many wonderful plans that just frustrate the hands on workforce.

  • Tess says:

    29 Jul29 July 20:21

    A chance to shop at a Sainsburys Local makes me privileged?

    • Lady Londo says:

      30 Jul30 July 12:38

      Nope. Has to be a Little Waitrose.

• Dubious says:

  29 Jul29 July 14:39

  BA could make a few quid by opening up Waterside for public tours…if they selling artwork…why not.
  No staff to infect if they have moved out.

  • C77 says:

    29 Jul29 July 22:27

    And 36,000 motives to drive a slurry lorry past the main entrance with the outlet valve set to open….

    • Lady London says:

      30 Jul30 July 13:28

      That Stockley Park campus has good security at the gate so sadly your $h1t wagon wouldn’t make it in @C77

• Lady London says:

  29 Jul29 July 14:42

  This is a bit more credible about BA needing to save costs than selling off some cr*p art, isn’t it ?

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    29 Jul29 July 20:00

    Unclear – if indeed parts of the workforce are still working there then they’re not closing anything- moving a few folks to TBC and the wfh staff continuing to wfh is not massively meaningful if they’re keeping waterside open, and that is definitely not mothballing!

• ChrisC says:

  29 Jul29 July 14:53

  Not sure how much they would save in the lone run.

  They could get 3 months rate relief on an empty property but having plans to move back in would seem to indicate that wouldn’t apply plus they’d be back to full whack from month 4 onwards. I can’t be bothered to look up the rateable value to calculate it but it’s on the gov.uk website

  They would save some costs of utilities if no one is using electricity or gas or water. Insurance would still need to be paid as would cost of security and alarms

  And there would be costs of moving IT and other equipment out and then back in again.

  Perhaps HAL could just take it over and demolish it now?

• Fenny says:

  29 Jul29 July 15:08

  Waterside reminds me of working in the new BNFL building on the UKAEA site at Risley in the 80s. One of my jobs was to arrange the move of 120 people from 5 different buildings across the site into one section of one floor of the whizzy new place. But we only had vending machines, unlike the old blocks who had tea trollies.

  • Andreas says:

    29 Jul29 July 15:21

    Hinton house? It’s still an interesting building from the outside – looks vaguely like a Japanese building as BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Limited – now Sellafield Ltd) wanted to represent their strong links with the Japanese at the time. It is very grim inside though, especially in winter. It’s also an absolute maze, as it’s W shaped – each crossroads at the corner of each W looks exactly the same!

    • Fenny says:

      29 Jul29 July 22:24

      Yes. I worked on the 3rd floor East end. Quick exit to the canteen at lunchtime. There was a link on the 3rd floor that ran across the back of the W. Once you got the hang of it, it was fine. One of my co-workers had hens, so I had an egg round that covered most of the floors.

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