Guardian

Is News International  planning to leave Wapping behind for ever? There is growing speculation by staff within the plant that a temporary move into an adjacent set of buildings will lead to the permanent abandonment of the place once known as the fortress.

The great exodus from Wapping to nearby Thomas More Square is due to begin in September. Since it involves many hundreds of staff, the move will be accomplished in stages.

The surroundings for the staff from all four News Int titles - The Times, Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World - will be very different.

No 3 Thomas More Square is a modern complex with piazzas and courtyards amid what its owners, Land Securities, call "a perfectly formed business village" close to St Katharine s Docks (and a large Waitrose supermarket).

News Int will inhabit 17,000 square metres, which is said to the biggest letting of second-hand space in the London office market since 2003.

The employees know they will be there for at least three years while the Wapping site is supposedly renovated. Billed as "a massive redevelopment", it is said to have been costed at £540m, according to a report last November by estatesgazette.

At the time, plans for a 21st century Wapping included a 1m sq ft campus-style scheme with 924,000 sq ft of offices and a £5m gym as well as the remodeling of the print works and the adjoining grade II-listed rum warehouse building (of blessed Sunday Times 1980s editorial memory).

It was predicted that the new complex would enable several News Corporation companies - such as the book publisher, Harper Collins - to move in.

Though planning permission was finally obtained for the revamp, there is a belief that those redevelopment plans, which have been put on hold, will never happen. The move to Thomas More Square will be permanent.

Indeed, it is obvious that the planning permission makes the plant a lot more valuable than it would have been if sold off as a derelict site.

Enter the conspiracy theorists (aka journalists). They have conjured up two major, and overlapping, theories.

One is the claim that News Int played a clever game to obtain planning permission in order to make a financial killing by selling the Wapping site. After all, it is believed that the rental costs of TM Square are somewhere around £12m for three years, a mere snip set against the likely profit for a sell-off.

The second conspiracy theory - which I was asked about on radio recently and instantly dismissed - is that the move heralds the disposal of the loss-making Times and Sunday Times.

This theory rests to an extent on the gradual segregation of the Wapping business divisions, involving the newspaper titles, the printing facilities and the property portfolio.

In the last few years, new print works have been created in Broxbourne, Knowsley and Motherwell, which have been placed in a separate company, Newsprinters.

As for the papers, The Sun and News of the World are held in a subsidiary called News Group Newspapers while The Times and Sunday Times are separately held by Times Media. (That, by the way, has always been the case).

Anyway, according to the theorists, once the Wapping link is broken, each title becomes little more than a brand name and an office full of people. So this will allow NGN or Times Media to be sold far more easily than in the past.

I have already argued with a couple of News Int journalists that this sounds like far-fetched balderdash. But last night I received a lengthy email from inside Wapping retailing virtually the same scenario.

The really interesting story is what News Int will do with Wapping, the site that, even in these straitened times, will surely get more and more valuable as the years pass.

Will the staff go back or will News Corp s bosses - Murdoch pere and fils - decide that Thomas More Square suits them just fine, especially if the company can enjoy a windfall from selling off Wapping?