His Majesty The King pays visit to GCHQ’s North West offices
This week, His Majesty The King visited GCHQ’s North West base where he met with teams from across the organisation, including graduates from GCHQ’s apprenticeship scheme and Director GCHQ, Sir Jeremy Fleming.
In his former role as The Prince of Wales, His Majesty was the patron of the UK intelligence services and will today receive several briefings from GCHQ’s mission teams.
His Majesty The King also joined a local primary school class who were invited to take part in a special lesson at GCHQ’s Manchester office. The Co-Op Academy New Islington’s lesson was part of our work to inspire the next generation of codebreakers, engineers, mathematicians from the North West.
Heron House, which opened in late 2019, is the home to our newest offices in Albert Square in the heart of Manchester, contributing to an already thriving technology scene. The hi-tech premises sees the agency using cutting edge technology and technical ingenuity to identify and disrupt threats to the UK while allowing the agency to draw on the talents of companies and people in one of the most vibrant and diverse cities in the UK. The offices come complete with public space designed for welcoming local technology start-ups and innovators to collaborate with the agency on some of the biggest tech challenges of the day.
The collaborative working space has seen industry, academia and local communities from the area invited in to work alongside GCHQ staff. This builds on a series of collaborative schemes with tech start-ups and universities run from GCHQ’s Manchester office including its Research Fellowship Programme for National Resilience and the Security and Trust Partnership.
The agency’s presence in the North West is expected to continue to grow with the National Cyber Force’s new HQ to be located in Samlesbury, cementing the North-West region’s position as the cyber centre of the UK. The joint MoD and GCHQ partnership is helping to keep the country safe through offensive cyber operations and will help grow technology, digital and defence sectors across the whole region.
The NCF draws together personnel from intelligence, cyber and security agency GCHQ, the MoD, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), under one unified command for the first time.
