Amazon to treble London workforce in new office move

Amazon is to move to London offices near ‘Silicon Roundabout’, nearly trebling its head office workforce to 5,000.

The e-commerce giant will relocate from its current base in Slough to 15-storey Principal Place in Shoreditch in 2017, located near many other tech and web-based UK companies, which has led to the area being dubbed Silicon Roundabout after Silicon Valley in California.

The company currently employs 1,700 people in its UK offices and the move heralds an almost trebling of its workforce to 5,000 people as it “invests, expands and continues to create new jobs in the UK,” the company said.

“London to become the new home of Amazon in the UK with all corporate employees to be located in the capital by the summer of 2015,” Amazon added.

Amazon opened its first London office in Holborn last year, employing 1,600 people.

Construction on the new offices, based on Norton Folgate, between Liverpool Street and Shoreditch High Street stations, will commence later this month and Amazon will take residence in 431,000 sq ft of office space in 2017, following the development’s completion in 2016.

Christopher North, managing director of Amazon.co.uk, said: “We have already invested well over £1bn and created more than 7,000 permanent jobs across the UK. To support our continued growth in the UK, we have secured this exceptional building giving us the capacity to hire thousands of new employees in London in the coming years, in addition to the thousands of permanent roles we will create across our UK fulfilment and customer service centres.”

London Mayor Boris Johnson is also quoted in Amazon’s press release. He said: “Our city is the perfect home for top tech talent and I am very pleased that Amazon have confirmed their intention to create thousands of new jobs at a major new base in east London. We are proving time and again that we have the right places and people to support this vibrant sector.”

While Amazon claims to employ 7,000 people in the UK, the Public Accounts Committee found in November 2012 while probing its tax affairs that Amazon employed more like 15,000 people in Britain, including warehouse staff.