The ABC will move 300 staff from their current Ultimo offices to a new location in Parramatta.
As first reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the announcement came to staff on Wednesday morning.
In an email, the broadcaster’s managing director David Anderson said that the move “will help us to be more connected, relevant, and engaged with communities in the demographic heart of Sydney.”
He also acknowledged that “we are only at the very start of this process.”
According to the Herald, the moving staff will stem from various content divisions, including regional, local, entertainment, news, and specialist, and from support teams.
The new offices are expected to be finished by 2024.
Back in March 2020, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher suggested that the ABC should sell its inner-west offices and relocate.
Anderson also said last year that, in terms of cost-cutting, “one of the things we have done is undertake a feasibility study, which looks at some of the immediate options that might be available to us in regard to the properties we hold, specifically with regard to what opportunities might exist when it comes to our Ultimo building.”
However, “to totally decentralise Ultimo would come at a cost at a time that we need to find savings.”
