Big Four accountancy firm KPMG is to establish a new office in Norwich to help serve its client-base across East Anglia.

Steve Muncey, regional chairman for KPMG in the East of England, is moving from the firm’s Cambridge office to head a new team of multi-disciplinary specialists in Norwich.

The move comes less than a year after KPMG closed an office Ipswich, but the firm said yesterday it was not a case of having chosen one location over the other.

It said the Ipswich practice had closed in December because the lease on its office had come to an end and, despite an extensive search, the firm had been unable to find new premises in the area to meet its needs.

Joe Faulkner, head of business development for KPMG in the East of England, said: “We are disappointed that we couldn’t find new premises in Ipswich as our ideal scenario would have been to have offices in both Ipswich and Norwich supporting our Cambridge office. However, that didn’t work out.

“We have some amazing clients in Suffolk and will continue to support them from both our Cambridge and Norwich offices and from the large number of our specialist advisers who live in the region. We are thrilled with the new Norwich office.”

KPMG last had a presence in Norwich 16 years ago. The new office in the city, where the firm has taken over the ground floor of Dragonfly House, on the banks of the River Wensum, is due to open by mid-September and will offer a full range of services across the tax, audit and advisory sectors.

Mr Muncey said: “KPMG has been working with businesses in Norfolk for decades so we are delighted to have a physical office back in the city which will further strengthen our relationships here.

“The recent transformation of the region has been fantastic and Norwich is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK with an incredibly vibrant local economy, a mix of early stage, SME and corporate businesses which suits our broad range of services perfectly.”

He added: “Given our other East of England office in Cambridge we have a number of really skilled people working in the areas of, for example technology, life sciences and innovation which fits really well with the businesses on the Research Park and of course we are a global business, which plays to the strengths of the growing number of global financial services businesses here in Norwich.”