A GOVERNMENT agency is closing one of its offices and plans to transfer many of its staff to Stevenage. Last week the Land Registry announced it was closing its Harrow operation in 2010 with the loss of almost 250 jobs. The agency hopes to keep redundanci

A GOVERNMENT agency is closing one of its offices and plans to transfer many of its staff to Stevenage.

Last week the Land Registry announced it was closing its Harrow operation in 2010 with the loss of almost 250 jobs.

The agency hopes to keep redundancies to a minimum by transferring as many staff as possible to the Land Registry offices in Brickdale House, Swingate, Stevenage, or Croydon.

A spokesman for the Land Registry at its head office in London said it was impossible to say how many staff would transfer to Stevenage as it was four years before the Harrow office closes.

"The number of staff affected by the Harrow closure may have changed in four years time so we cannot say how many staff will apply to move to Stevenage or whether they will have the capacity to take them."

Chief land registrar Peter Collis said: "We will be sorry to close our office in Harrow which has served us well since 1965.

"We need to reduce the number of local offices to match our lower staff numbers."

But the plans to relocate staff to Stevenage are being fought by the public service union UNISON.

The union's London secretary Eddie Coulson said: "This closure will mean that staff will either be laid off or moved at great inconvenience to offices that are 30 miles away or on the other side of London.