Publisher Hachette to relocate London jobs to Sheffield as part of regional diversity plans

The company is to open five new offices in Sheffield, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, and Bristol over the next 12 months, following a year-long consultation with staff who have volunteered to relocate.

It is actively looking for office space and expects up to 40 London-based staff from across the business to move over the next year, with at least a hundred relocating by 2022.

David Shelley, chief executive of Hachette UK, said: “Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do at Hachette and regional diversity is another way to bring fresh ideas into our business.

We want to forge closer links to the brilliant pool of creative talent outside the ‘London bubble’ and connect more closely with readers, authors and booksellers around the UK to enrich our publishing.”

He added: “Our new offices are a great way for us to retain staff who no longer want, or can afford to, live in the capital. We also intend to recruit locally, rather than automatically creating or backfilling roles in London, and hope to offer traineeships once the offices are fully established.”

Hachette UK kicked off the consultation process in 2019 with a staff survey, in which 41 per cent of respondents expressed interest in relocating outside London and specified a city.

Five cities were chosen and a working group visited each city to meet independent publishers, booksellers, literary charities and representatives from other creative industries. Staff were then asked to reconfirm their interest, before meetings were held to agree whether it was viable to relocate their roles.

Hachette UK already has offices in Banbury, Chichester, Dublin and Glasgow, with the Hodder Gibson team in Glasgow due to relocate to Edinburgh next year. Emma Layfield, previously group picture book publisher at Hachette Children’s Group, relocated to Manchester earlier this year to become picture book development director, North.