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Minister challenges Preston
Lancashire Evening Post | 1st April 2010

Preston has been challenged to show it can take some of the 15,000 civil servants due to flood out of London in the next five years.
Phil Woolas, the regional minister for the North West, said the city had to show it had the credentials to house the huge numbers of Government workers due to relocate.

This includes, he said, ensuring that the necessary quality of office space, houses and transport infrastrcture was in place to cope with an influx of workers.

Liverpool is believed to have landed jobs from the Ministry of Justice at its Pall Mall site while the Mayfield development, dubbed the Whitehall of the North, in Manchester city centre is expected to attract 5,000 jobs.

Mr Woolas said: "Everyone says that Whitehall is too powerful and what we are doing here is inviting people to come and take power out of Whitehall, but the ball is in the court of the cities looking to do that.

"That means showing the right accommodation is there, the infrastrcuture is there to cope with increased numbers of people, housing, roads, a whole host of things.

"Just because Manchester and Liverpool are places which have been targeted for some of these jobs, it does not mean Preston or anywhere in Lancashire is not - but it's up to them to make their case."

But, he insisted that there were no plans to take jobs out of Lancashire to relocate them to regional hubs like Mayfield, close to Manchester's Piccadilly station.

Frank McKenna, chairman of business lobbying group Downtown Preston in Business, warned earlier this week that jobs, including thousands in the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs, could leave the city.

Mr Woolas said: "It is not a case of keeping the existing structures and moving people out of London, otherwise we would just be replicating the same issue on a smaller scale with Manchester being the focus.

"The challenge is for councils, health departments or the police to look at how they are operating and make that more efficient."