400 Civil Servants In One Building

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30399, 25 March 1964, Page 18

400 Civil Servants In One Building

More than 400 civil, servants will move into the Government Life Insurance Office’s new building in Cathedral square in June and July. Workers in the Inland Revenue Department will have space on six of the nine floors of the building. The tax gatherers will occupy a great deal of space, but equipment, including more than 100,000 income tax files each going back five years at least in hundreds of filing cabinets, will occupy more. The ground floor will have a restaurant and tailoring shop, both open to the public. The Tourist Department win

have a public counter on the ground floor. The first floor will contain the Government Life Insurance office, the cashier's office of the Inland Revenue Department and a cafeteria for civil servants. The Duties Division of the Inland Revenue Department and the Department of Industries and Commerce will be on the second floor. This floor will also contain conference and committee rooms, which will replace the Ministerial rooms in the M.L.C. building, Manchester street The Customs Department will occupy the whole of the third floor and share the fourth floor with the Taxes Division of the Inland Revenue Department The Taxes Division will have the whole of the fifth floor and most of the sixth, a small portion of which will be occupied by

the Statistics Department. The Taxes Division will take up all the seventh floor and the eighth floor will be devoted to the Tourist Department and the State Services Commission. The concentration of 400 civil servants will be the largest in Christchurch, under the control of the commission. The Ministry of Works building in Worcester street houses approximately 250. Ineluding Sunnyside Hospital and the Dental Nurses’ School, there are between 2500 and 3000 civil servants under the control of the commission in Christchurch. The arrival of 400 civil servants to work and their departure, the great majority at the same times, win create some traffic problems in Cathedral square—both pedestrian and vehicular. Access to the building from the east frontage is cramped by a bus and taxi sone, and the footpath is not very broad. The commission retain* its parking lots near the square.