The Charity Commission is moving into new London offices that will provide four desks for every five employees.

The move will allow the regulator to more than halve its annual accommodation costs.

On the weekend of 8 and 9 March the Commission will move from its current HQ on Millbank to Drummond Gate in Pimlico, a building that is part of the Government Estate which public bodies are required to use.

The new office will be almost half the size of the current one and the running costs will drop from £914,000 plus VAT to £420,000 plus VAT.

About a quarter of the Commission's 309 full-time equivalent staff work in London.  A spokeswoman said there will be eight desks available for every ten employees, and this will be managed through more hot-desking, laptop use and flexible working.

The lease will run until January 2018.

The regulator last moved its HQ in the summer of 2009, from Harmsworth House in Blackfriars to the current building in Millbank where its landlord is the Audit Commission.  At the time it said it signed a nine-year lease, but as the Audit Commission is now being wound up the Commission does not have to honour that lease.

In Drummond House, the Commission will occupy about a quarter of the space that it occupied four years ago in Blackfriars.

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