ONE of Southampton's biggest employers should be in its new £45m corporate headquarters within two years.

As reported in Friday's Daily Echo, the UK mapping agency Ordnance Survey has confirmed it is to move its Southampton headquarters from Maybush to the massive new Adanac Park development planned for Nursling.

The multi-million pound move will see the agency's 1,000 staff move into a state-of-the-art building next to the M271, while reports suggest the agency's former headquarters in Romsey Road will be torn down and replaced by a mix of housing and business units.

Transfer The decision to move comes just a few years after the agency completed its transfer to a digitised industry from a paper-based one, with the OS currently holding around half-a-billion different features of the British landscape on its maps.

Commenting on the move, head of corporate communications Scott Sinclair said: "Our job is to keep the maps up to date, therefore the reason behind the move is to ensure we can continue to work as efficiently and effectively as possible."

He said the current building was built in the 1960s and was designed for up to 5,000 employees - a fifth of the number now needed because of IT advancements.

However staff may find some changes.

Mr Sinclair added: "Part of the new working arrangements for staff will mean they will have more flexibility. For example not everyone will have their own desk, but they will have their own laptops so, in the summer say, they could work outside in the sun."

He also said that the printing department at OS may not move to Adanac Park for practical purposes.

He said: "It is envisaged that the printing part of the business won't come to Adanac Park, simply because it is not cost effective to house it in the same offices. But it will not be leaving the Southampton area.

"Ordnance Survey has been in Southampton since the 1890s and we intend to stay. We hope that the move to Adanac Park will help keep us in the heart of city life."

OS will now be submitting a planning application to Test Valley Borough Council later this year, with the hope that the move could be completed by the spring of 2009.