Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has announced it will open a base above a restaurant in central Manchester in an uncharacteristic bout of openness for the usually secretive organisation.

Heron House, nestled next to a Slug and Lettuce in the city’s Albert Square, is being refurbished and will host as many as 1,000 staff when it officially opens later this year.

Bosses at the agency said the city had been chosen so the organisation can easily recruit some of its 100,000-strong student population and that the idea of top secret intelligence work taking place in a city centre was “revolutionary”.

The organisation’s HQ is in Cheltenham but it also has bases in Bude, Cornwall, and Scarborough. Earlier this year it was revealed that a drab office building opposite St James’s Park tube station in London was a secret GCHQ base used by spooks for 66 years.

GCHQ said staff at the Manchester facility will use “cutting-edge technology and technical ingenuity to identify and disrupt threats to the UK”.

Jeremy Fleming, the organisation’s director, said the “unprecedented” pace of change in the world was creating “complexity, uncertainty and risk” and that it was vital his agency adapted.