1.1 The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) provides intelligence and information assurance services for the Government under the terms of the Intelligence Services Act 1994. This defines its main role as obtaining and providing information, and providing advice and assistance about languages, cryptography and other matters relating to the protection of information and other material. This was to be done in the interests of national security, of economic well being or in support of serious crime prevention. Ministerial responsibility for GCHQ rests with the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
1.2 GCHQ employs some 4,500 people at two large sit (Figure 2) es in Cheltenham - Oakley and Benhall. The organisation's main customers are UK Government Departments including the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Security and Intelligence Agencies.
1.3 The Oakley and Benhall sites had been in use by other Government departments since the late 1940s but were first occupied by GCHQ in 1952. At that time they comprised a number of low-level, single storey, brick-built blocks which have a central spine and spurs to accommodate office and technical areas. Since the 1950s larger blocks of three to six storeys have been built to accommodate advances in technology and the expansion of the business.
1.4 Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, GCHQ had to address the problems of maintaining ageing buildings and meeting the demands of rapid changes in technology in the collection of signals intelligence. By the late 1980s, GCHQ considered moving operations into a single building, but the large size of the organisation and staff numbers meant that this would have been difficult. Following the end of the Cold War GCHQ reduced its staff numbers.
1.5 GCHQ found that its existing buildings were inflexible and ageing. It accordingly developed plans known as the Cheltenham Building Programme. This was to provide good quality accommodation for staff with an increasing requirement for desk-top equipment, and for the increasingly complex Information Technology systems used by them.
1.6 The Cheltenham Building Programme involved a rolling plan of accommodation improvements at both Cheltenham sites, covering the 20 years from 1990 to 2010. The first stage of the Programme involved building a new office block at the Oakley site, and a major new building to house the computer centre and provide modern office accommodation for the Information Technology staff. GCHQ also considered constructing a new building on the Benhall site to relocate the Communications Electronic Security Group (CESG)1, part of its business.
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1 Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) is the Information Assurance arm of GCHQ. It is the UK government's national technical authority for information assurance issues, and helps formulate information assurance policy and provides guidance for official use, for example by Government departments.