The National Theatre of Scotland is to have its headquarters in Govan, not Easterhouse, The Herald can reveal.

The Scottish Government has backed plans by the national company to have its main offices, rehearsal space and store in a former Harland and Wolff engine shed in Govan.

The decision comes four years after Frank McAveety, the then culture minister, said the NTS would be based in the Glasgow east end housing estate.

Earlier this year The Herald revealed that the core staff of the NTS, whose work such as Black Watch, The Bacchae and Wolves in the Walls has been commercially and critically successful, did not have enough space in The Bridge complex in Easterhouse.

Linda Fabiani, minister for culture, has accepted that the staff, which sometimes rises to 60, cannot be accommodated at The Bridge. She agrees the situation, with most of the core staff based in Hope Street, is untenable and backed a plan for a base in the building known as The Shed.

The Bridge will remain a key base, however, being a centre for its new Emerging Artists scheme.

It plans to move to Govan at the end of 2008. But it will not be used as a theatre. Vicky Featherstone, the artistic director of the NTS, is not changing the company's policy of being tied to any one performance space.

The owner of The Shed - which was the venue for the play The Ship in the 1990 City of Culture celebrations - Angus Macmillan, has resisted selling the site in a 17-year wait for a cultural organisation to claim it.

Ms Fabiani said: "The Bridge has been a huge success and is a great building. But the Bridge is limiting for the NTS in going further, and moving on. The fact that the lease in Hope Street is coming to an end has probably come at the right time."

Ms Featherstone said she was very keen to stress that the NTS, with its Emerging Artists scheme, was still working in Easterhouse.

"One of the things I have always had an issue with, is that it's been portrayed that the NTS wants to move away from Easterhouse," she said.

"If we could fit in Easterhouse, we would all be there. All this means is that we won't be in Hope Street any more.

"Easterhouse is our permanent home base, what we are looking for is medium-term accommodation for our offices and rehearsal space. Easterhouse is still a permanent home."