Iain Wright, chair of the business committee, and Meg Hillier, chair of the public accounts committee, have written to Martin Donnelly, the BIS permanent secretary, calling on him to release information on the department’s estimate of the costs of the closure of its St Paul’s Place office in Sheffield, which employs around 240 people. …

… this week the department was forced to admit that employing people in its Sheffield office costs less than a third of what it costs in London.

In an answer to a written question from the MP for Sheffield Central, Paul Blomfield, the universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, said the annual cost of rent, rates and maintenance for an employee at the office in Sheffield was £3,190, compared with £9,750 at the headquarters on Victoria Street in London. …

… In the letter, the two committee chairs said the information relating to the reorganisation of the department that the permanent secretary had provided was “wholly unsatisfactory” and his answers in oral evidence to their committees had been “obfuscatory, if not misleading”.

“Your refusal to disclose the information we have sought is unhelpful, unjustified and is impeding our ability to fulfil our scrutiny functions,” they said.

“[We] are asking for precise information about the work done to estimate the costs of different scenarios in relation to the closure of the Sheffield office and transfer of posts to London. Specifically, could you please provide us with a copy of the document entitled BIS 2020 Finance and Headcount Outline, and any other document which has informed decisions relating to the Sheffield office.”

The letter asked that the information be provided before Donnelly appears before the public accounts committee on 27 April. …

… “Taxpayers deserve better from those working on their behalf. We expect the permanent secretary to respond swiftly and with clarity on the points of concern raised by our committees, which includes releasing the information we have requested. Only then can the decision to close the BIS Sheffield office be properly scrutinised.”

Wright, the business, innovation and skills committee chair, said: “The permanent secretary is accountable for the use of public funds and needs to demonstrate the financial rationale and evidence-based business case for the decision to cut jobs in Sheffield and centralise policymaking in London. The permanent secretary has a responsibility to enable us to scrutinise the running of his department and disclose this information.” …

… Donnelly stressed that the department had not yet reached final decisions about the number of roles in the Sheffield office that would be made redundant and the number that would be moved to London. He said there had, therefore, been no formal cost-benefit analysis of the decision to close the Sheffield office.”