The Doughnut

Coordinates: 51°53′58.21″N 2°7′27.64″W / 51.8995028°N 2.1243444°W / 51.8995028; -2.1243444

An aerial view of The Doughnut, 2004

"The Doughnut" is the nickname given to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. It is located on a 176-acre site in Benhall, in the suburbs of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.^[1][2] GCHQ is the largest single employer in Gloucestershire.^[1][2] The Doughnut was completed in 2003, and GCHQ moved into the building in 2004.^[3] It is the largest building constructed for secret intelligence operations outside the United States.^[4]

An annual Community Day is held at the Doughnut to highlight the charitable and volunteer work by GCHQ staff in the local community.^[5] The Doughnut has twice been visited by Charles, Prince of Wales, since its opening.^[6] In 2011 Charles was accompanied by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, on his second visit to the Doughnut.^[6]

Background

The construction of the Doughnut in 2003 consolidated the operations previously spread across two sites into a single location, replacing more than 50 buildings in the process.^[1] The last staff from the GCHQ site at Oakley were transferred to the Doughnut in late 2011.^[7]

The design of the Doughnut reflects the GCHQ's intended new mode of work after the end of the Cold War, with its design facilitating talking among staff, and between them and the Director of GCHQ and his subordinates.^[1] It was estimated that anyone in the building could reach any other worker within five minutes.^[1]

The Doughnut from Leckhampton Hill, 2010

At a cost of £330m, the construction of the Doughnut was funded by a private finance initiative (PFI) put forward by a collective that included British facilities management and construction company Carillion, the Danish security company Group 4/Falck (now G4S), and the British telecommunications company BT Group.^[1] The consortium are scheduled to be paid £800m to maintain the Doughnut for 30 years. The creation of the Doughnut was the largest PFI project to date for the British government.^[1] The building was designed by the British architect Chris Johnson for the American architectural firm Gensler.^[8]

In 2004 the chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, criticised the increasing cost of GCHQ's move to the Doughnut.^[9] Leigh said that "It was astonishing GCHQ did not realise the extent of what would be involved much sooner".^[9] Leigh had said in 2003 that GCHQ's original estimate for the cost of the move was "staggeringly inaccurate".^[10]

For security reasons, GCHQ moved its own computers and technical infrastructure to the Doughnut, which caused the cost of its move to increase from £41m to £450m over two years.^[9] The moves of MI5 and the SIS to new buildings had also cost more than three times their original estimates due to issues with transferring computers.^[11] HM Treasury paid £216m toward a newly agreed budget of £308m, having initially refused to finance the original high figure.^[9] The final cost of GCHQ's move to their new headquarters was more than seven times the original estimate.^[10]

The complexity of the computer network at GCHQ was responsible for the increase in costs. Issues with the network were found while preparing computers for the "Millennium bug". Simply shutting down each computer individually before restarting them in the Doughnut would have left GCHQ unable to complete key intelligence work for two years, while moving their electronics according to the original schedule without "unacceptable damage" to intelligence gathering would cost £450m.^[10] In a review of GCHQ's move in 2003, the National Audit Office said government ministers might never have approved the consolidation of facilities had the final cost been known.^[10]

Design

The Doughnut is divided into three separate four-storey structures, identical in design and connected at the top and bottom.^[1][12] With a total size of 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m²), the building contains two circular blocks, internally divided by a "street" covered in glass.^[1][12] Construction materials were primarily steel, aluminium, and stone, particularly granite and local limestone from the Cotswolds; designers incorporated recycled materials in the steelwork and the construction of desks.^[1]

A circular walkway named "The Street" runs throughout the building.^[13] An open-air garden courtyard lies in the middle of the Doughnut; this garden is large enough to contain the Royal Albert Hall.^[14] Below the garden are banks of supercomputers.^[1] The Doughnut is 70 feet (21 m) high and 600 feet (180 m) in diameter.^[14]

The structure of the Doughnut is designed to minimise any potential effect of a fire or a terrorist attack on the building; it also includes independent power generators which can supply power to the facilities in an emergency.^[1] About 1,850 miles (2,980 km) of fibre optics were installed in the fitting out of the Doughnut by British Telecom, and 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of electrical wiring were used in the building.^[1]

The Doughnut is surrounded by car and bicycle parking in concentric rings, guarded by a two-metre metal fence and half a dozen vehicle checkpoints.^[2][14] The Doughnut is served by an underground road.^[14]

Facilities available to staff at the Doughnut include a 600-seat restaurant, shops, a gym, and a prayer or quiet room.^[1] Exhibits from the history of GCHQ are displayed throughout the building, including the radios used by the Portland Spy Ring.^[13] The Doughnut was already too small for the number of GCHQ staff at its completion, as a vast expansion in the number of employees had occurred as a consequence of the September 11 attacks in 2001.^[4] The staff numbered almost 6,500 by 2008.^[4]

Access to the Doughnut is rarely granted to representatives from the media, but it was visited for the March 2010 BBC Radio 4 documentary GCHQ: Cracking the Code and by The Sun newspaper in December 2010.^[13][15]

See also

The two other headquarters of British intelligence agencies;

• The SIS Building – Headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (known as MI6)
• Thames House – Headquarters of the Security Service (known as MI5)

References

Bibliography

• Aldrich, Robert J. (2011). GCHQ. London: Harper Press. ISBN 978-0-007312-665.