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As a member-driven organisation and as part of our ongoing drive to deliver the best value for our members, the senior management team and board of directors of British Marine have reviewed extensively all aspects of our operation. This is in order to achieve our 2025 strategic plan aspirations of developing the British marine industry by driving improvements in product and service quality, marine careers, training, government representation and overall consumer participation in UK boating.
Relocating British Marine’s head office to Southampton by Spring 2020 enables the organisation to remain accessible to its members and positions the organisation in the area in which 65% of the leisure marine workforce are located.
The UK’s largest festival of boating has taken place in Southampton for over 50 years and having the British Marine’s operational team close to the show site brings added benefits in terms of reduced travel time to meetings and closer relationships with the city.
Many of the nation’s maritime organisations are headquartered in Southampton and the city hosts several universities and further education colleges attracting tomorrow’s marine professionals. Transport links via road, rail and air are extremely convenient, allowing staff and visitors easy access to the office.
While being on the South Coast is convenient to many members and enables better direct member contact, British Marine will ensure that we continue to service our members by hosting alternate board meetings in the regions. In addition, we have reorganised our regional representation to better serve existing and new members through the whole country and will be creating regular regional workshop sessions across the UK.
It remains our ambition to host regionally based events and our autumn expo in 2020 focused on inland boating will be hosted in the Midlands. We also intend to proactively support and promote northern regional based boating events in 2020.
Ensuring the financial security of British Marine is key to its ongoing success. By relocating, the team will be occupying the 3300 sq ft our organisation needs and releasing over 7000 sq ft of office space available for rent in Marine House in Egham. This should result in transforming Marine House into a contributing asset going forward.
After consultation with staff, we are pleased to report that plans to relocate are progressing well. It is hoped that British Marine’s new office location in Tagus House in Ocean Village will be operational in Spring 2020.