A dramatic increase in mobile working will help ICL to cut £20m from its property costs and reduce office space by more than a third over the next five years.

Around 25% of the company's 20,000 employees are currently mobile workers but according to a report in Computing ICL hopes to have 35% of its staff hot desking by 2002. ICL's director of corporate infrastructure, Richard Reed is quoted as saying: "We are moving progressively towards a model where a single building will be able to cater for twice the number of employees than it did several years ago.

"The benefits for the mobile working employee are greater flexibility, improved networking and better use of time, particularly in relation to time spent in the office and facing the customer," said Reed.

Towards the end of last year ICL signed a partnering agreement with Chesterton for property and facilities management (see News story).