Capita to cull 40 architects

Consultant Capita Symonds is to shut its London architecture office with the loss of about 40 staff in the capital.

A spokesperson for the company, which employs 300 architects, said the job losses came as a result of “current market conditions”.

Capita is the third large architect in recent days to announce job losses, following Archial and Zaha Hadid Architects.

Staff at Capita Symonds have been told the company’s architecture studio at Goswell Road in Clerkenwell will close with all remaining staff moving to the headquarters at Holborn.

Last year Capita had a number of schools including two in Nottingham cancelled as part of the scrapped £55bn Building Schools for the Future programme.

It had also been working on Ministry of Defence plans for a £13bn armed forces training academy in south Wales, cancelled in October.

In November the multi-disciplinary firm carried out a corporate restructure that saw the end of Capita Architecture, with all its functions moving to a new design and infrastructure division under the Capita Symonds brand.

At the time, managing director Jonathan Goring said the move would “position us for the next exciting cycle of investment in our business”.

The Capita spokesperson said it would now carry out a redundancy consultation process where “every effort will be made to redeploy staff at other Capita Symonds offices around the country”.

A version of this story first appeared on Building sister publication BD here