The Kennel Club has opened its new offices in Aylesbury, having moved a matter of yards away from its previous home in the Alton House Office Park in Gatehouse Way.
The Kennel Club moved its core operational activities to Aylesbury from its headquarters in London in the summer of 1999, namely the registration, Petlog and call centre services. In the original move, five members of the London team relocated to Aylesbury, while other members of staff were recruited locally. Alton House was originally obtained on a ten-year lease which was then renewed in 2009.
The new Aylesbury address is known as Kennel Club House and its purchase was made possible through the £12m payment that the Kennel Club received when it struck a deal with British Land in 2013 to move its London headquarters further up Clarges Street in Mayfair. The money also enabled the Kennel Club to purchase its recently-opened Emblehope and Burngrange Estate in Northumberland which it aims to develop as a centre of excellence for working dogs.
The Aylesbury office handles high volume activities on behalf of the Club, with the monthly average equating to 48,000 telephone calls, 20,000 puppy registrations, 14,000 transfer applications and 70,000 microchip recordings.
Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club Secretary, said: “It is strange to think that the Kennel Club has had premises in Aylesbury for 18 years as, for some of us, it seems like only yesterday that the original building in Alton House Office Park was opened. We are very pleased that the move into the new Kennel Club offices went very smoothly – in fact there was no down time to any single service during the transitioning of both service and staff to the new building.”
The new address for the Kennel Club offices in Aylesbury is Kennel Club House, Gatehouse Way, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire HP19 8DB. The telephone number remains the same – 01296 318540.