Interview with Clive Thornton

In 1967, The then Chief Executive of Abbey National, Stanley Morton, became a member of the MKDC Board. This was soon after Clive was appointed Abbey’s Chief Solicitor. He asked Clive to visit MK & look for opportunities there for Abbey National. There seemed little to offer at this early stage, but during the early 1970s, Abbey thoroughly surveyed potential sites for their expanding headquarters team, and concluded that Milton Keynes had become the ideal location, given its position, the planned central railway station and housing for employees. Abbey approached MKDC with proposals for offices, but were frustrated by Fred Roche, the General Manager of MKDC, insisting on the ‘low-rise city’ policy, which did not meet Abbey’s requirements. They were also offered a site next to the sewage works, which Clive objected to.

In 1978, after various changes in management, Clive became Abbey’s C.E.O. himself, under Chairman Campbell Adamson; they decided to visit Jock Campbell, MKDC Chairman, to propose to him that Abbey should have a freehold, five-storey, traditionally built headquarters building in MK, specifically on a site opposite the railway station. Jock Campbell saw the benefits Abbey could bring to MK in terms of employees and business, and the proposal was then accepted by MKDC Board, over-riding the previous ‘two-storeys’ only notion. Once the Abbey’s Board heard that they had been promised all they had asked for, in a city that now had sufficient housing for staff to move there, the move was agreed. Clive started the persuasion of staff to move to MK by buying a house himself in Pennylands, off-plan; the office design and building process moved fairly quickly, he says, but by the time staff were able to move in, he was no longer in post, having left Abbey in 1983 for Mirror Group newspapers. Looking back, Clive believes that the move to MK in 1983 (and later establishing their Computer Centre there also) has been a ‘great thing’ for Abbey National. In his view they had little difficulty persuading the core staff to move.