The HDC will be relocated to Stoneleigh in Warwickshire to take its place as part of the newly christened Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, Defra has announced.
At a briefing in London yesterday it was announced that the new levy board for agriculture and horticulture will be located on the site of the Royal Show.
Lord Rooker, Defra’s food and farming minister, said the proposal to put the levy headquarters and the six sector companies - which will include the HDC - on one site from 2009, was one he endorsed..
“This was a radical decision and the move will bring benefits from having all sector companies together on site and will result in significant savings, so that the new levy board and its companies can spend more of the their funds helping levy payers,” he maintained.
Chair designate of the overall board, John Bridge, added: “By placing everything on one site and sharing some core services, including back office arrangements, we can generate savings in the order of £3.5 million a year.”
He told Commercial Grower that the savings to horticulture, would be in ‘the hundreds of thousands of pounds.’
“We believe we can do it on one site more efficiently at lower cost, and therefore you can provide more services to levy payers,” he said. “If I was a levy payer, I would find that a very compelling argument.”
On the important point of overall funding, Bridge accepted that long term ‘blue’ and strategic funding had reduced, but horticulture’s vital need for more ‘near market research and development funding was well known.
Bridge added that horticulture and the HDC in particular have been the leading light in promoting cross levy board research, so the levy boards had already realised they needed to have meaningful contact with each other.
With the new structure, the chances of doing more collaborative research is greater, he insisted.
Bridge said that when the board looked at their current properties within the Defra ‘family’, there was only one that fitted the requirement - and that was Stoneleigh.
There would be no satellite offices allowed, but regional offices of some of the current levy boards and regional officers could continue.
“The priorities of the horticulture sector will be set by the horticulture sector company and this is better achieved in one place,” emphasised Bridge.
He said that the horticultural sector board chairman Neil Bragg had made it clear that he wanted to keep the principle accepted at HDC of having specific panels as an important sounding board, at least for the time being.
“The arrangements that on April 1 2008, we as the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board, take up our responsibilities for the system and all of the staff in the levy boards would transfer and come across to us. We will use that year to begin to alter the structures to bring them in line to what we have proposed,” he said. “During that year we would begin to bring financial services into place on a sound basis.”
He added that from now they were looking at 18 months to bring the system into place.
He also said that a new road would be built to the Stoneleigh site. The point was put to him that to reduce the ‘carbon footprint’ it was a new rail line from the nearest town station Coventry which would be better.
Neil Bragg meanwhile urged calm over the relocation announcement, stressing that any moves would take at least a couple of years to be realised and that it is important that current staff be retained, however that may be achieved.
He also emphasised that the business strategy outlined by Defra this week does not give the level of detail needed to ensure that horticulture will get its money back, and that this will need to be addressed.
No comments yet