Hachette UK announces plans for five new regional offices

16^th June 2020, London – Hachette UK has announced plans to open five new offices in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield and Bristol over the next 12 months, following a year-long consultation with staff who have volunteered to relocate. The publisher is actively looking for office space and expects up to 40 London-based staff from across the business to move over the next year, with at least a hundred relocating by 2022.

David Shelley, CEO of Hachette UK, commented: “Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do at Hachette and regional diversity is another way to bring fresh ideas into our business. We want to forge closer links to the brilliant pool of creative talent outside the ‘London bubble’ and connect more closely with readers, authors and booksellers around the UK to enrich our publishing.

“Our new offices are a great way for us to retain staff who no longer want, or can afford to, live in the capital. We also intend to recruit locally, rather than automatically creating or backfilling roles in London, and hope to offer traineeships once the offices are fully established.”

Hachette UK kicked off the consultation process in 2019 with a staff survey, in which 41% of respondents expressed interest in relocating outside London and specified a city. Five cities were chosen and a working group visited each city to meet with independent publishers, booksellers, literary charities and representatives from other creative industries. Staff were then asked to reconfirm their interest, before meetings were held with their respective MDs and department heads to agree whether it was viable to relocate their roles.

Hachette UK already has offices in Banbury, Chichester, Dublin and Glasgow, with the Hodder Gibson team in Glasgow due to relocate to Edinburgh in January 2021.

Emma Layfield, previously Group Picture Book Publisher at Hachette Children’s Group, relocated to Manchester at the beginning of this year in a new role as Picture Book Development Director, North. Emma has a remit to establish an office, acquire more Northern and Scottish picture book authors and illustrators, and is responsible for networking, building relationships and looking for business opportunities in the North and Scotland.

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About Hachette UK:

Our mission at Hachette UK is to make it easy for all people, everywhere to access new worlds of learning, entertainment and opportunity.

We are one of the UK’s largest publishing groups, with 10 autonomous publishing divisions and over 50 imprints with a rich and diverse history. We are also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

We publish thousands of new books across the group every year and our authors include Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling and Malala Yousafzai.

Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Little, Brown, Orion, John Murray Press, Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, Quercus, Bookouture and Octopus. Hachette Children’s Group publishes a diverse range of books for children of all ages and Hodder Education is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools.

We have offices around the UK, including our headquarters in London and the Hely Hutchinson Centre (HHC) for distribution in Didcot. We have subsidiaries in several other regions, including Australia, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jamaica and New Zealand.