Q31 Mr Jones: September 11 happened after all of this had been agreed and it is my understanding that you are now increasing staff numbers?
Dr Pepper: That is right.
Q32 Mr Jones: Is the new building big enough? Do you have room for manoeuvre on the existing site?
Dr Pepper: No building can have unlimited room for manoeuvre but, because of some small changes we have made to the way the building is configured, but more particularly because of changes to the way we are using it, we are able to cope with the expansion that we have had, and possibly even with a further small expansion. What we are doing is moving away from the concept of one person, one desk. We are taking account of the fact that on any particular day 20% or 30% of desks are likely to be empty because people are on leave or travelling on business and we are at the moment operating at about a 5% margin; there are 5% more staff in the building than there are desks. We are confident that we could go certainly to 10% and I suspect significantly beyond that once people get used to the idea, so, yes, we have flexibility for the foreseeable future.
Q33 Mr Jones: One of the issues which I know was raised was the whole issue of parking and various schemes were put together for encouraging staff to use green transport. Is that working? Are there enough parking spaces?
Dr Pepper: It is too early to say. It is working now simply because we have only moved 1,000 people in so far, but we are confident that it is going to work. Once we get to what we are calling steady state, where all car parks are built, which will be another 15 months or so, we have a number of schemes for controlling the parking and, taken together with various moves to increase green transport, like encouraging walking, cycling, a lot of car sharing and working with the local authority to improve bus services, we are pretty confident that we shall cope with what will then be about a 15% reduction in parking spaces. We have got an awkward time between now and then because we cannot build all the car parks until we have knocked these buildings down and we are having to go in for park-and-ride arrangements over the next 12 months. Once we get to steady state we are pretty confident it will work.
Q34 Mr Jones: Another issue which I know has been talked about is access to the site because the stretch of the A40 outside the building is the heaviest used piece of road in Cheltenham. Did you have any discussions at all with other government agencies about the possibility of attempting to relieve that traffic by making junction 10 of the M5 two-way so that lorries trying to get to the Kingsditch industrial estate and the Cheltenham retail park would not get off at junction 11 and trundle past you?
Dr Pepper: I do not know the answer to that question, I am afraid. I can say that we worked at great length and in great detail with the local authority and with the transport authorities to make sure that the configuration of roads we have will support all the traffic that is expected. I do not know whether that particular question was asked but I could find out.2
Q35 Mr Jones: Are you intending to monitor the traffic situation and make representations if it does get worse?
Dr Pepper: Certainly, and I think the local authority will monitor traffic as well fairly closely.
Q36 Mr Jones: The building itself came in more or less on budget?
Dr Pepper: The building itself, of course, whether it was on budget, is a matter for the contractors. I understand it has come in on budget; and the technical transition programme has also come in on budget, which is what we are managing.
Q37 Mr Jones: It was also early.
Dr Pepper: The building was nine weeks early, yes.
Q38 Mr Jones: So in that respect it was very successful.
Dr Pepper: It has been very successful and we have made considerable use of that earliness to make our transition process rather easier. We have made a lot of use of the two and half months' extra time we had to de-risk the process, as a result of which we started moving people in on the date that was specified in the contract three years before.
Q39 Jim Sheridan: I would like to concentrate on the security aspects of the building given the sensitive nature of your business. If you feel uncomfortable about discussing that please feel free to refuse to answer. A significant amount of your staff were once described as the enemy within for deciding to join a trade union. Is that still the case, that that is still a concern at GCHQ?
Dr Pepper: No. The national trade unions are now back in GCHQ and our staff association is part of PCS and about half our staff belong to the national trade union.
Q40 Jim Sheridan: So it is no longer a concern, or was it ever a concern?
Dr Pepper: Obviously, there were concerns during the period immediately after the de-unionisation which caused a great deal of tension but those problems are behind us now.
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