A Rocha UK are looking for a new national hub office

An update from CEO Andy Atkins, May 2020.

Thank you to everyone that has commented on A Rocha UK’s property move update announced in our April eNews. From the feedback so far, and some very well-thought out suggestions of properties or areas we could move to, it is evident that many of our supporters would like to see us move out of London, and become less London-centric. I and the Trustees have great sympathy with that. (For one thing I personally do not enjoy commuting at least 3 hours each day from my home in South London to the office in West London. I do it by public transport for environmental reasons; driving would halve the travel time on a good day).  

However, we are not dealing with a simple equation, and I would like to share more information with you so that you can pray with us and into our situation.  

If A Rocha UK was being set up anew, with our mission for mobilising Christians and Churches around the environment, there would be considerable logic in being located in a central point in the UK. However, we are not starting from scratch. A Rocha UK was founded as a local environmental restoration project in a very deprived area of West London, for which there was and is still a great need. Despite the fact that the vast majority of local residents in Southall are not Christians, we’ve been able to engage many people from a diverse range of backgrounds and demonstrate the love of Christ through our commitment to caring for creation and building community with them. The strong links to this local community include some of our staff and core volunteers, many of whom live in close proximity to our offices at Avenue Road or the west side of London more generally. These historical roots affect what we are able to do.

The Management Team and Trustees have developed a comprehensive set of criteria for selecting a new location and premises. Three key criteria are:

1. To be able to take the majority of current staff with us in any move. We are only a small organisation. Staff have very specialist skills and knowledge, and are all practicing Christians engaged in their local churches. Moving to a place which made it impossible for even a small number of staff to continue working with us because commuting times or expense prohibited it or they were unable to relocate, would have a hugely detrimental impact on A Rocha UK’s work and even survival. We’d love to hear from you if you know of any like-minded organisations who might have office space we could lease, especially in or near West London.

1. To be within rapid and affordable reach of many of the key national organisations that we are increasingly trying to influence. The vast majority of these are based in the capital. In normal times, a considerable number of staff each have several meetings or events a month in Central London. Although a change in many organisation’s work practices following the Covid-19 lockdown experience may lead to more online meetings,there will still (eventually) be a regular need for face-to-face meetings and gatherings.

1. Affordable. This combination means that we still need a national office in a suitable part of the London region. To be clear, we think it highly unlikely that we could meet the affordability criteria in Central London (unless a generous organisation made us a very cut-priced offer on space!). But London is a very big and varied place, and we are currently looking in the outer rim on the West side, closer to where current staff are or can easily reach, with good access to both central London and transport  routes to the rest of the country, without paying the prices of being in central London.

However, there is another very important strand to our thinking – and we do expect staff to be increasingly dispersed in their home and work locations in the future. We currently work with Partners all over the UK, including Northern Ireland, and wherever our future national hub office is located, we aim to build stronger links in the UK regions and nations. 

So, alongside looking for a new, small national hub office, we are also diversifying working arrangements to enable us to recruit more staff in the future from anywhere in the country, as well as to give us a greater physical presence in other regions. For example, if the best candidate for a role that doesn’t actually need to be located in the small national office, lives far from it, we would prefer to locate them with the nearest Partner in Action, or a willing Eco Church that has some spare space, if they do not wish to work from home.  This would have the advantage of providing our staff with more of a working community locally, and also, of course opening the door for us to recruit new staff to key positions from a much wider geographical area, as they might only be required to come to London weekly or even monthly.

So, we need to distinguish between the location of a small national hub office and how and where all staff work and have local links. We believe we need a small office that meets the criteria above. However, even now, many members of our small team work remotely much of the time. We are now expecting this to increase post-Covid. So we are absolutely not seeking a Central London office big enough to accommodate all staff every day. Rather we’re looking for a small space for core national staff in a much cheaper part of London, with good access to the centre and to the rest of the country. This currently points us to certain locations in West London.

The ongoing crisis with Covid-19 has inevitably slowed down our search for and decision making on our future national hub office. Senior staff and trustees continue to prayerfully consider options as they emerge. Thank you for praying with us on this important matter.