New Hardwick Street office renovation progressing well

The renovation and refurbishment of our new office building in Hardwick Street is on track for us to take occupancy later this spring and remains within budget.

Having purchased the building with sitting tenants in 2022, work to convert the building into a suitable office space for the RCVS team and stakeholders began in earnest last summer, once the premises were vacated.

Since then, work has continued apace to create a working environment that suits our organisational development and flexible working arrangements, and which supports our strategic ambitions to work collaboratively with partners across and beyond the veterinary sector.

As well as dedicated working floors for our staff team (one of which will also be dog-friendly!), our new home will also provide:

• Dedicated space and facilities for visiting MsRCVS and RVNs,
• Adaptable meeting rooms to support Council and committee work,
• Additional meeting rooms to suit in-person and hybrid working,
• Video conferencing facilities,
• Breakout areas for informal meetings and collaborative working,
• An event space with catering facilities,
• The RCVS Knowledge Library & Information Service and heritage collection,
• Multi-faith and wellbeing rooms for visitors and staff, and
• A small recording studio for webinars, podcasts and interviews.

RCVS Chief Executive Lizzie Lockett, commented: "The new building represents the culmination a huge amount of work from colleagues and specialist contractors, and it’s going to be a new home for us as Royal College that regulates, both for our staff team and also for the vets and vet nurses who are our members. It will be a place that we can call our own, it will have our own sense of identity and be somewhere that will bring everybody together.

"Our new strategic plan has collaboration at the heart of it – the idea of being stronger through working together – and our new building will help us to achieve that. A space where we can all work together, share ideas, and challenge each other in a productive way.

"Our new strategic plan has collaboration at the heart of it – the idea of being stronger through working together – and our new building will help us to achieve that. A space where we can all work together, share ideas, and challenge each other in a productive way."

Lizzie Lockett, CEO

"Also, it supports our sustainability aims, including using recycled materials, repurposing things that were already in the building, looking carefully at our procurement policy and having solar panels on the roof.

"It’s really exciting to see the transformation from what was a Victorian warehouse into a Royal College building, and I’m really looking forward to the day, quite soon, when the noise of the building site is replaced with the buzz of a working environment.”

After taking occupancy of the building later this spring, we hope to host our first Council meeting in the summer, and then plan to make the building increasingly available for visitors in due course.