GCHQ to move house

The nerve centre of the Government's communications operation, GCHQ, is to move to a new site, it was announced yesterday.

Private-sector firms are being asked to put forward proposals for the massive scheme to relocate GCHQ from its current Fifties-built base at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, to a new purpose-built complex. Officials say the present base is not equipped to deal with advances in technology, and, with the end of the Cold War, the department could be housed on a smaller site. A GCHQ spokesman said yesterday that it was hoped the new base would be built in the Cheltenham area, where it employs 5,000 people on two separate sites.