Memorandum submitted by British American
Chamber of Commerce
1. In your Committee's Report of two years
ago[23]
some reservations were expressed about the possible sale of the
British Consular Residence in San Francisco. As you will have
learnt from Mr Derek Wyatt's Early Day Motion of 3 April (#1011),
the question of the sale of the residence has again been raised.
2. The Board of the British American Chamber
of Commerce and its Members totally oppose the sale of the present
residence and its replacement by a much more inferior residence
for the following reasons.
3. At present the Consular Offices in the
Financial District in San Francisco have no suitable space where
British Ministers, Parliamentary Groups and Trade Delegations
can be entertained with a view to meeting local dignitaries and
business people.
4. The result is that all such entertaining
is carried out at the Consular Residence located at 2516 Pacific
Avenue, San Francisco where up to 200 or more persons can be accommodated
for a cocktail party and 34 at a dinner. In addition, a previous
Consul General remodelled the basement so that up to 50 persons
can be accommodated, theatre-style, for presentations.
5. The proposed new residence, which is
a modest family residence by San Francisco standards, can only
accommodate a much smaller number for receptions and a maximum
of 14 to dinner. It is the type of house one would find in Acton
or Ealing, a far cry both in size and architecture for the type
of house envisaged by your Committee in its report of two years
ago.
6. Enclosed[24]
are photos of the existing and proposed new British Residence
and photographs of the German, Italian, Japanese and other Consular
Residences. Whilst the present residence compares very favourably
with these, the proposed new residence is very inferior, even
to the Indonesian. The image of the United Kingdom is bound to
suffer and, with no suitable residence to entertain large numbers
of people, is bound to hamper Britain's commercial and consular
efforts to promote it as the leading country in Europe for inward
investment, as evidenced by the fact that at our last count there
were approximately 500 US companies from the San Francisco Bay
Area with offices in the United Kingdom.
7. Other concerns we have are that as far
as we can ascertain no cost benefit analysis of the proposed transaction
has been carried out. It appears to us that the whole process
of identifying a property was carried out in a week—not
the way one would normally go about identifying and purchasing
a residence in a market where suitable listings are few and far
between at any one moment of time.
Executive Director,
British American Chamber of Commerce
April 2003
23 Ninth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee,
Session 2000-01, Foreign and Commonwealth office Annual Report
2001, HC 428, para 15. Back
24
Not printed. Back
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