It is located within the Regent Centre business park, and was originally built to act as the main entrance and landmark building within the headquarters complex of the Northern Rock bank, prior to its near-collapse and nationalisation.

The council bought the building, initially known as The Tower, for £22 million, and it is currently leased to a number of companies including Astrium Services, Wood Group and Ubisoft Reflections.

[6][7] Northern Rock also had customer contact centre operations at both Doxford International Business Park in Sunderland and at its head office.

[13][14] Taylor Woodrow was the main contractor, and companies such as Desco[15] and Red Box Architecture[16] were involved with the design and construction.

The tower has a semi circular floor plate containing flexible open plan space and external roof top hospitality facilities.

In September 2007 Northern Rock received emergency liquidity support from the Bank of England, due to problems stemming from the subprime mortgage crisis.

At the time of its nationalisation, the bank was midway through construction of the 10-storey tower which was intended to create 1500 jobs, and act as the main entrance and focal point of the company headquarters.

This was due to Northern Rock deciding to defer their decision to sell the building, as well as opposition from the local Labour Party.

This was after a report refuting Labour's claims was put before two scrutiny panels, and that a motion to send the decision back for further discussions was defeated by seven votes to six, at the Civic Centre.

[32] The multinational Carillion later found themselves in financial difficulty and Partnership House began to be let to a number of different companies from different industry segments.