Tom, I'm a Senior Manager with ACN, and I'm afraid to say that this is pretty much non-negiotiable with regards to the scenario that you've mentioned. If you were to say, be based out of Kingsley Hall in Manchester, and happen to be assigned to a project which was commutable from Manchester, then you'd be expected to travel to and from the client site on a daily basis. ACN would reimburse you expenses, in the event, that they were greater than that normally incurred by a normal commute from your home to Kingsley Hall. However, Nottingham would not be viewed as a home which was deemed valid in this context. Although, ACN do not put any specific requirements that people should be based within a commutable distance, in the event that a scenrio such as this arose from an expense claim, then your home would be treated as Kingsley Hall, and any expenses would be calculated as per se. This exact situation happened with me a few years ago. I was based in Manchester, but was based in Scotland and for the first few years I worked in London, and thus ACN put me up in an awesome riverside flat in central London that was within 10 mins walk to the City. All expenses were taken care of, including a daily living allowance, flights, taxis to and from Manchester on Mondays and Fridays. Hence, life was good. And then I was stationed on a project based in Halifax, which thus required me to 'commute' from home. Obviously, it was impossible to commute from Scotland to Halifax. Thus, in the end I had to get a flat in Manchester and then later on, in Halifax itself. I couldn't really grumble, since I had had it so good for a number of years and the money i saved, allowed me to buy my first house. The days when people in Manchester worked in London and vice versa are somewhat a thing of the past. ACN are now more cost conscious and people to tend to be staffed on projects close to their home offices so that such expenses aren't uncessarily incurred by the firm. Now that we're a public entity, our costs are even more heavily scrutinised. Hence, if you decide to plump for Manchester, then there's a good chance that you'll be based in the North. Also there is currently a significant amount of work, as well as in the future pipeline, now in the North. Given you're defiance on the matter of not relocating, I'd throughly recommend that you have a discussion with HR prior to joining. Since they may be able to give you a steer on likely projects, so that you can guage whether you'll have such a dilemma to consider. The more senior you are, the more likelihood that there will be a project that has already been targeted for you. When you become more senior and have established a network of partners with whom you work with, you are then in a better position to negotitate assignments and projects and thus locations. Even if one is canny enough to always be staffed on out of town projects, you may be asked to relocate to another office which is close in proximity to your client base (e.g. London for Financial Services). I relocated to London after a few years, and was told that if I hadn't done so at the time, I would have been asked sooner or later to make the move. My advice, would be not to push too hard on this topic, especially given that you've not even joined yet and haven't proved yourself to any Partners. If you try going head to head with HR or a partner, you could find yourself quickly frozen out. Best of luck, and welcome to the Firm. If you'd prefer to have a chat about it informally, I'd be more than happy to help.Cheers
