Manchester THE WORLD’S MOST PROGRESSIVE CITY?

Business Insight

Tuesday October 1 2013

Brain powerDigital creativity: page 2Why grey matters: page 6A top education: page 13

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Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

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It’s a fast-growingsector and theuniversities are racing to keep up, hears Mike Cowley

Digital and creative is not only the fastest-growing sector of the North West economy, but also – apparently – the only one with any growth. At least

that was what one delegate reported when The Times Forum met to discuss the topic in what many people now con-sider to be the beating heart of digital and creative in the North: the glittering glass-and-steel edifi ce of MediaCityUK in Salford.

But while there is no doubt that the regional sector is coming along by leaps and bounds – the recent arrival of the BBC is testimony to that – the problem with supporting such a claim is that there is no clear defi nition as to who or what should be included in the digital and creative sector.

Much used in Government forecasts to provide some good news, it remains an arguably somewhat grey and ill-de-fi ned area, predominantly found at the thin end of the SME (small and medi-um-sized enterprises) market. That is why even estimates of digital and crea-tive jobs in the North West vary wildly, from 135,000 to 250,000.

The only conclusion that appeared to come from the great and good of the sector on the Forum panel – who were asked to categorise it – was a somewhat fuzzy defi nition that creative covered ideas and intellectual property (IP), while digital was simply the delivery method to get them to market.

“It is easier to say what is not in the sector,” said Ed Matthews-Gentle of the Creative Lancashire economic develop-ment service, representing the public sector. “The language is changing all the time in defi ning creative industries.”

Yet while there was a degree of un-certainty as to who should be included in the sector, there were some very defi -nite views as to what was needed to give it even further traction. University edu-cation – or the need for it to integrate with and so support digital and creative work – was appropriately high on the agenda given the Forum’s location, the über-modern Salford University cam-pus which nestles cheek by jowl along-side both the BBC and ITV.

The gloves really came off on this one, with the Forum chairman, Alas-dair Nimmo of The Times, observing

the exchanges like a referee wanting to ensure a free-fl owing fi ght. Dennis Ke-hoe, a former university professor who now heads a cloud computing-based data centre operation, insisted that he would not even hire his own son, a re-cent graduate with a fi rst-class honours degree.

“I love him dearly, I would trust him with my life – and he’s a network en-gineer and I employ armies of network engineers – but I wouldn’t employ him,” Professor Kehoe insisted. “I couldn’t let him near my kit or anything that mat-tered. They may all be better educated, but they know naff all about what they need to know.”

With three digital agencies repre-sented at the Forum, there was never going to be any shortage of input on this topic (or on any other topic, for that matter). Ben Hatton, of the Liverpool-based high-impact player Rippleffect, refl ected on the time when he won a football scholarship to George Wash-ington University and how the new fee structure has transformed what hap-pens today.

“I got a full scholarship, so I paid nothing,” he said. “Now you’ve got a couple of years to fi nd £40,000. So the goalposts have changed dramatically because of the cost of going to univer-sity.

“But we need to see people who are educated so they are sector-ready. We are in such a fast-moving sector that we are already thinking about who we need to bring in next year and the skills they will need. The problem is universities can’t change the syllabus midstream.”

Mike Perls of MC2, the leading full-service agency based in Manchester, sits on the Manchester Metropolitan University advisory board. He said that to cope with the problem his company – and others like his – were now taking people in and training them in-house: “Whereas we will always take graduates in, we are now doing some of our own training, as we have a very specifi c re-quirement of graduates that come out.”

The problem, as most panellists saw it, stemmed from the sheer pace of change of digital, which meant that the univer-sities had diffi culty keeping up. James Lloyd-Davies, the director in charge of digital at Citypress, refl ected on the reaction of student placements within their rapidly expanding PR business.

“With students who came in from digital courses – we give them safe bits to do – the biggest feedback from them is it was stunning,” he said. “They didn’t even know what a crisis scenario was apart from Gerald Ratner. We often fi nd the graduates we see are very rigid

in what they understand, so the univer-sities could do with building in some softer skills.”

Dennis Kehoe was not to be left out of the pace-of-change discussion. “The world needs two-and-half-million cloud computing engineers between now and 2015,” he said. “Guess how many cloud computing engineers we produced in this country this year? None. It takes about fi ve years to get a course ap-proved. In fi ve years’ time, cloud com-puting might not be here. We could be doing something else by then.

“Universities have got to think again about their 24-week years, the two 12-week semesters. Maybe you should start to think about a three-year course in two years. We need to structure it a bit different.”

Naturally the two local academics on the panel – Professor John Davies and Dr Brian McGarrie – mounted a robust defence of Forum host Salford Univer-sity, itself one of the most sought-after centres for digital and creative training.

Professor Davies moved quickly to put Dennis Kehoe straight on the is-sue of restructuring. “We already have,” he said. “Our business school delivers programmes over 46 weeks a year. The only time we don’t is over Christmas and New Year. And we have six intakes on our Masters’ programmes each year.”

He went on to point the signifi cant role the university already plays in helping not only digital and creative but all sectors in terms of placements. “If you get really good motivated students out there working on a problem that gives value – then everybody wins,” he said. “The business gets something that needs to be done that probably wouldn’t have been done, the student picks up some great experience and the organi-sation gets to see a potential employee.

“You need tech skills, but also very importantly that person has to fi t into your culture – what better way to fi nd out that than working there for a period of time?”

Dr McGarrie moved in to point out that the courses on offer at Salford – which now include an MBA in digital

Wanted: the right kindof graduate

Digital & creative

During the week of the Conservative Party conference, The Times North sets out to remind Prime Minister David Cameron what a vibrant place Greater Manchester really is – and why calls for an increased devolving of power should not go unheeded, as it will pay dividends not only for this region but for the entire UK economy.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, sets the scene on page 5 with a Big Ask of the Coalition – yet another Big Ask from the region which, as the Prime Minister is already well aware, set the agenda for the City Deal.

Greater Manchester appears to have established the tone for those unitary authorities which have signifi cant bargaining power and which come in big enough packages for Government to do business with, as a number of other core cities are now heading swiftly down the same route.

Unlike the Straw Man in The Wizard of Oz, Greater Manchester has the brain power to back this up – through its universities, which have produced economy-shaping breakthroughs such as graphene. And for an encore, the University of Manchester has become the fi rst to develop a computer to effectively map the brain, so offering a potential route for treating schizophrenia and depression (see pages 6 and 7).

We have not overlooked the importance of Salford and Media-CityUK to this equation. The transformation from the old dockyards to the new – in the form of what is rapidly being recognised as the centre for the digital and creative sector in the North of England – is a key indicator to the regeneration taking place here.

So what is the digital and creative sector, and how it is manifesting itself in the North’s economy? The Times Forum, to be found on this spread, seeks to answer these questions, while the growing importance of Salford University is discussed on page 4.

If Mr Cameron really wants to get a feel of what is going on, he should take a ride on one of the Metrolink trams, the envy of planners around the world. Or, alternatively, he could go for a bike ride in the city that is the home of cycling.

We are not suggesting that the Prime Minister should get on his bike – as some old Labour stalwarts in Manchester might wish – but simply that he takes time to see a city which can contribute so much to his economic plans.

Welcome

The brain gain

How the brain worksManchester University pursues the answer

Page 6Get on your bikeCity transport boss pushes pedal power

Page 8Because they’re worth itIndependent education in the North of England

Page 13

Inside

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 3

business – were always open for discus-sion and feedback from any sector they serve. And, naturally, the needs of the students themselves had to be built into the equation.

“Apart from digital and creative,” he asked, “the question is do we supply the graduates industry wants anyway? Now we’ve got undergraduates on a £9,000 fee, they are also very demanding.

“Do we create standalone digital creative programmes like our MBA in digital business, or should they just be doing an MBA with digital business in-cluded? One of our major issues is em-ployability, and we are trying to make graduates more rounded, so it is an in-teresting debate.”

So how important, asked Alasdair Nimmo from the chair, is the digital and creative sector to the economy in the North?

“There’s always been a strong inno-vative seam running through the North – theatre, music, one of our finest ex-ports,” said James Lloyd-Davies of City-press. “What digital has created is mar-keting-centric, it can be used to move businesses forward. Our business has grown by creating digital chances – but, from a GDP [gross domestic product] perspective, this is difficult to quantify.”

Funding was also flagged up as an obvious area of concern for most – but

certainly not all – digital companies. “We work in a service industry,” said Ben Hatton, “so for me it is about going out and getting that work – that’s what I mean by inward investment.

“If we were just about getting clients in the North West, it would be like hit-ting a brick wall. It is about positioning yourself as a top player in the North West, then going down to London and winning that business.”

London, however, does not seem to be facing the same issues. “When you look at London,” said James Lloyd-Davies, “there is high-risk investment around and I question whether at the moment we have that available to someone who has a fantastic idea up here.

“London has that air of Silicon Valley, but ventures outside the capital won’t get that level of funding.”

Again Dennis Kehoe entered the fray. He pointed out there was nowhere for firms to go outside of the banks – if any are still amenable – who will lend at 4 per cent to 5 per cent, and venture capi-talists who want 30 per cent plus a dilu-tion of ownership. “What you want,” he said, “is sensible money between 7 per cent and 15 per cent.”

Professor Kehoe also attacked region-al funds as “doing a great disservice”, adding: “Do you think they’ve got a re-gional growth fund in Silicon Valley?”

The question of IP

Panel members, from left: Neil McCluskey, Professor John Davies, Ben Hatton, Professor Dennis Kehoe, Mike Perls, Alasdair Nimmo (chair, The Times), Edward Matthews-Gentle, James Lloyd-Davies, Dr Brian McGarrie, Samantha Livesey

We are trying tomakestudentsmorerounded, so it is an interesting debate

The fact that both creative and digital are based on ideas meant that the question of IP – intellectual property – figured prominently in The

Times Forum debate.Here the floor was given over to

Samantha Livesey, a partner in Pinsent Masons and an authority on the legal minefield that sometimes surrounds this subject.

She told her fellow delegates that IP is often created automatically – as in the case of computer code – but that the SME needs to understand what it is they actually own and how best to protect it and to make sure it isn’t unwittingly given away to competitors.

“If you are subcontracting to a third party,” she said, “first make sure you own it and then ensure you aren’t assigning any rights over. With your

own employees you are fine.” She warned that in the UK it is very dif-ficult to register patents around digital technology unless the technology is working with hardware, although bigger companies will often patent things in the US that you cannot patent in the UK.

There is also the constant danger of “patent trolls” who hoover up patents from around the world. “Small guys haven’t got deep enough pockets to go after them,” she said, “so they end up paying licensing fees or not being able to use their own product.

“You can’t protect an idea in itself, as someone else can use your idea so long as they are not infringing copyright. Then there is the case of companies looking to buy you – they will need to know what protection you have from competitors.”

What do the Forum panel members expect to be the next big thing in digital and creative in the North?

�� “Trying to make the most of the brand we have got, which is Me-diaCityUK. We’re here, the BBC is here, the whole supply chain is here.” – Professor John Davies�� “Identify the halo businesses and understand them. Get the narrative right about why we are better than Barcelona and Berlin. But the next big thing is digital healthcare, which the North West should be known for and which it should exploit.” – Mike Perls�� “Big data, healthcare data, transfor-mational technology – and regional TV is going to start to play a much bigger role.” – Dennis Kehoe�� “Healthcare. We have a very strong life sciences cluster, great universi-ties, loads of big data out there for companies to harness the tech-

nologies around it and analyse.” – Samantha Livesey�� “Integration between business and universities – them seeing the world we are in. Data is very interesting, personalised data and how it is go-ing to be used.” – Ben Hatton�� “As the digital economy starts to come out of the flat period, there will be more confidence and we will see more exciting things like [intelligent] wearable fabrics.” – Neil McCluskey�� “Big data and personalised market-ing – giving the consumer what they want to buy even before they know they want it.” – James Lloyd-Davies�� “Big data, but we have to work out how to monetise by enhancing the content, enhancing the user experi-ence.” – Ed Matthews-Gentle�� “Embed digital into our curricula, increase the relevance of our pro-grammes in terms of employability.” – Dr Brian McGarrie

The next big thing

�� Professor John Davies, associate dean (resources), Salford Business School, and professor of quality management and business devel-opment.��Dr Brian McGarrie, director of MBA and domestic programmes, Salford Business School.��Neil McCluskey, international trade advisor, UKTI.�� Ben Hatton, managing director, Rippleffect.com, digital marketing agency.

�� James Lloyd-Davies, director, Citypress.�� Edward Matthews-Gentle, creative industries development officer, Creative Lancashire.�� Samantha Livesey, partner, Pinsent Masons, specialising in intellectual property and its protection.�� Professor Dennis Kehoe, AIMES – cloud computing business involved in building data centres.��Mike Perls, chief executive of the MC2 marketing group.

The Times Forum panellists

Understandably, Ed Matthews-Gentle leapt to the defence of the public sector. “In Lancashire we do have an invest-ment fund,” he said. “It is a loan fund for businesses – partly the reason behind that is we have a different attitude to risk. When it comes to digital and crea-tive ideas, banks are not going to go near those.

“If the sector is growing in our part of the world, it is because we are doing something – and it is in conjunction with the regional growth fund and the North West fund as well – so we have a part to play.”

The fact that the Forum delegates were only from established companies in the digital and creative fields did not mean that those who are starting out or wanting to progress were overlooked. Neil McCluskey, representing UKTI (UK Trade & Investment), was there not only to offer advice to the up-and-comers but also to give a warning.

“It’s not enough to be creative,” he said. “It is important the businesses treat

their creative element in a more busi-ness-like manner. They need to be out-sourcing and creating the partnerships around to add value to their business to make them more professional – and then get into overseas markets.

“There’s too much ‘I’m creative and I’ve got this fantastic piece of software’, and there’s no IP behind it, no trade-mark. The SME sector in which digital and creative mainly features seems to think of itself differently than the cor-porate side of business. I tell my clients they should have everything in place.”

While the Forum debate at times bor-dered on “frank discussions” – the phrase beloved of Government spokespeople to describe somewhat prickly debate – it ended on a high and harmonious note.

All the delegates found common agreement by welcoming the Gov-ernment-backed Technology Strategy Board, which has just announced £115 million for digital media production technologies, increasing the total pot to £400m this year.

PICTURE: THOMAS DEEGAN

Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight4

Rising Salford

We couldn’t have found a better location anywhere in the world than here

Neighbours’ high-profile work puts us close to the action, university professortells Mike Cowley

Salford has a history of being a place where neighbours would drop by for a cup of sugar or half a pint of milk, and where the cen-tral docks area was where most

people worked – or where, as the local scallies used to say, they would “borrow from” when the opportunity presented itself.

While times have changed, the city (and Salford is a city, if a somewhat small one overshadowed by Manchester) has recently become home to another close-knit community – MediaCityUK. This adjoins the now totally transformed docks area – and, while not being an offi-cial city itself (at least not yet), it certain-ly enjoys the status of the highest-tech village in the UK.

Home to the BBC, ITV and an ever-growing cluster of supply chain compa-nies in the digital and creative sector, it also houses the new campus of Salford University, bristling with an array of ad-vanced broadcast equipment which could well put some of its better-known neigh-bours to shame.

The building itself is a living show-case of the students’ talent, thanks to 120 Christie MicroTiles – “worth millions” – which can be assembled into a variety of high-definition video screen formats, a source of envy for the technically minded. This enables the university to construct a video wall larger than those available to their high-profile media neighbours.

A central staircase, with wide mingling areas on each floor where students from all disciplines can meet and absorb what their peers are doing, is far removed from the traditional rigid structure of a con-ventional university.

So too is the fact that Professor An-drew Cooper – academic director at the MediaCityUK campus – and his team all sit open plan, again creating the oppor-tunity for discussion and a cross-depart-mental learning experience. This, then, is a very different university campus.

Far-sighted planners at the university evidently saw the benefits of having such

prestigious neighbours as the BBC even before the first sod was turned, particular-ly for the digital and media courses they run.

It had for years been the case that uni-versities spewed out an ever-growing vol-ume of media graduates, only for them to find that jobs were increasingly hard if not impossible to obtain. The problem was getting feet through the right doors. Well, at Salford, the grand plan is that this will be somewhat easier if those doors happen to belong to your neighbours.

The Salford MediaCityUK campus does not just have its eyes on the more glamor-ous jobs in the media, but on everything that goes into the package – from pro-ducers and other frontline team places, through to the business backroom boys.

A steady stream of potential graduates from all disciplines is now in the pipeline, ready to respond to the needs of the indus-try – all effectively work-ready (although oven-ready is another description), thus answering a constant criticism of the cur-rent university system.

For just as with a Premier League foot-ball team, the shows – such as Coronation Street (for which a set is currently being built at MediaCityUK) and the major sporting outside broadcasts planned and executed from Salford – would never get on air without the backroom business staff to make it all happen.

Salford now finds itself firmly on the map – with the BBC constantly flagging up the connection in its news and sport broadcasts. Even those reluctant BBC em-ployees transplanted to what they thought was Manchester – or somewhere north of Watford – now realise they are actually in a different city and are currently reported to be enjoying the spectacular waterside location.

And while the spotlight is firmly on MediaCityUK, the Salford University campus – which is at the heart of it – has also been basking successfully in the glow.

With all this in mind, the university has been unashamedly forging links as it prepares its undergraduates to work in the digital and creative environment that surrounds them – the BBC can be found flanking the campus, while ITV, the rela-tively new kid on the still-new block, has premises above. So you cannot get closer to the action than that.

It is too early to say just how well this close proximity will work in terms of permanent jobs – the campus has just

started its third year of operation – but the signs are good. Last year alone there were 124 paid placements for students in and around MediaCityUK. The students find themselves embedded in the me-dia community – involved in a string of high-profile projects, with constant op-portunities to impress and advance their careers.

One group found themselves work-ing on a children’s television pilot for an independent company which is now be-ing pitched to the BBC – and which, if successful, has the potential for full-time work for the students involved.

SIS (Satellite Information Services), once effectively the BBC outside broad-cast service, currently has six Salford undergraduates in paid work placements at its MediaCityUK base. Again the posts reflect the diversity of the courses on offer: media technology, professional sound and video, finance and account-ing, business and management, com-puter science and computer networking.

Deluxe Media, also on-site, has been using four undergraduates to work on subtitles for live programmes, the com-pany’s area of expertise. Meanwhile, the campus has also been in part respon-sible for the flotation of a video games company. A group of students working in that discipline won the Dare to be Digital award, and are now developing their entry into a full-blown commercial offering under their newly formed com-pany Lamplight Studios.

Nor has the demand for Salford stu-dents been confined to MediaCityUK. Hewlett-Packard put up a budget of $25,000 – some of it in the form of prize money – for a promotional video to push desktop computing in an age when lap-tops have gained the ascendancy. The successful entry was so well received that it is being used to energise Hewlett-Packard staff worldwide.

Then of course there are the reverse benefits of being in MediaCityUK, with a string of high-profile TV producers dropping by to act as guest editors for the university’s Quays TV.

“We are perfectly positioned for what we are doing with the neighbours we have,” says Professor Cooper. “We couldn’t have found a better location anywhere in the world than right here.”

While the proximity to its high-profile neighbours has proved

key for the Salford University MediaCityUK campus, the fact that a significant propor-tion of its academic staff of 200 have worked previously for the BBC or ITV has certainly not been a disadvan-tage – and has helped to build some unique personal bridges to the industry it serves.

Typical of these is Dr Wilfred Darlington, who joined the university after 38 years spent working with the BBC in Manchester.

Most of his career was as an audio supervisor working in television, radio and outside broadcasts. He worked on regional news and sport – and covered 17 runnings of the

Grand National. When he left the BBC, he was a video journalist on the Politics Show.

Gaining a PhD at the University of Manchester while still working at the BBC set him up for his current aca-demic career at Salford, where he is teaching two modules on television technology. He sees a great paradox, however, in that despite being in MediaCityUK – the home of worldwide communications technology – face-to-face meetings are still the ones that get results.

“There doesn’t seem to be a substitute for having a cup of coffee face-to-face,” Dr Darlington says. “That’s the strength of Media City – I know if I want to talk to an old colleague, I only have to give them a quick ring and you meet up.”

MediaCitycampus isa cradle ofnew talent

Professor Andrew Cooper – ‘perfectly positioned for what we’re doing’

Voice of experience

Dr Wilfred Darlington

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 5

Rising Salford Governance

During the week of the Conservative conference in Manchester, council leader Sir Richard Leese has called for Prime Minister David Cameron to rethink the way the public

services operate in terms of end delivery at local level. Sir Richard’s plan, as he explained in an exclusive interview with The Times Business Insight North, would see the devolv-ing of powers of co-ordination to the cities, a move which he insists “could fundamentally transform the quality of life in this country”.

What Sir Richard wants to see is much of the work currently undertaken by the departments for Work and Pensions, Health and Local Government – the tackling of key issues such as troubled families, worklessness

and the integration of health and social care – to be handed over in terms of grassroots co-ordination to local experts with local knowledge.

This, he believes, would then help to eradicate the headline-grabbing problems of 13 professionals being assigned to cases where they are “all doing the right things but not in the right order”. And he insists that Manches-ter already has the evidence to prove this will work.

“We ran a pilot in Wythenshawe,” Sir Richard says, “targeting a couple of hundred couple of families in control groups. One lead worker co-ordinated the whole of the public sector interventions – assertively getting them in the right order.

“In this relatively small area, the reductions in domestic violence, anti-social behaviour and improved school attendance means they now need 12 fewer police officers. This can work, and it can work at scale.”

But someone needs to pick up the tab, and Sir Richard is concerned that the obvious financial benefits for the Government should translate into a return for the council. “If the money is going in from the local authority but it is coming out as a gain for the Treasury, it is not sustainable,” he says.

“We are talking about place-based budget-ing. This is not a cuts model for public sector spending, it is an investment model for public sector spending. Not only can we in the medium-term reduce public expenditure,

but we can do it in a way that gets better outputs.”

Sir Richard also has another request of the visiting Prime Minister. He wants the Gov-ernment to treat “all local authorities equally and fairly” in terms of spending cuts, which would result in Manchester being £50 million per year better off on the national average.

Under this plan, even the majority of London authorities would end up being better off, while the main losers would be the afflu-ent shires in the South East, such as Surrey.

“The request for each local authority to be treated on equal basis is not particularly ambitious,” Sir Richard says. “The big ask involves the changes to the public services model.”

As a staunch trade unionist, Sir Richard Leese was motivated to enter representational poli-tics in the 1980s when he felt that Margaret Thatcher was

destroying the Manchester economy – and with it the lives of Mancunians.

Today, he is still happily crossing swords with the “old enemy” (my words, not his – he is too consummate a poli-tician for that) as he steadfastly fights Greater Manchester’s corner with Mag-gie’s successor David Cameron and the rest of the Coalition.

In the meantime, he has helped to suc-cessfully weld Greater Manchester into a formidable unit and has led the campaign for the milestone City Deals which will see powers devolved to cities. These will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, not as one size fits all.

Sir Richard and his team have again set the pace by negotiating a risk-reward mechanism for Greater Manchester – known as Earnback – whereby his patch can receive money from central Govern-ment in recognition of the economic im-pact of its investment in infrastructure.

Known for having strong beliefs and sticking to them, Sir Richard attributes this to his maternal grandfather, a pit surface worker who announced that he was a conscientious objector in the First World War in the full knowledge that this carried the death penalty.

But Sir Richard entered politics more by accident than design. A former teacher turned youth worker living in Crumpsall with his teacher wife, it was the arrival of their first child which precipitated the move. He had agreed to take unpaid leave of absence to assume “lead childcare re-sponsibilities” when the Damascene mo-ment occurred.

“It suddenly clicked with me that I would have to go back,” he recalls. “And I realised I didn’t want to go back. So I pulled the drawbridge up and gave my notice in. Then I was forced to do some-thing different. If that hadn’t have hap-pened, I wouldn’t have ended up in repre-sentational politics.”

He decided on the Labour Party as his platform because the beginning of the Thatcher years had precipitated a “slight move” to the left. “This may not have been particularly popular with the electorate, but it suited me at the time,” he says.

Mr Leese, as he then was, stood against a Tory for one of the three seats in the Crumpsall council ward – two were Con-servative-held, the other had been won by Labour at the previous election – and was elected by the slimmest of majorities. Four years later, he held his seat by an even smaller margin – but he was already moving up the political ladder.

In the most recent elections, he re-ceived 78 per cent of the vote, recognition by the electorate of what he has undoubt-edly achieved for his adopted city – he comes from Mansfield in Nottingham-shire – over the intervening years.

Widely recognised as a formidable campaigner, his early years in the local political arena helped to hone the skills which he now shows in his successful dealings with Government. His first se-rious political lesson was learned in the 1980s – another time of austerity – and was that his belief that Manchester and other cities could take on the Govern-ment and win was seriously misplaced. “We couldn’t and we didn’t” he says.

The council in 1987 had pinned hopes on the Labour Party winning at that year’s national poll. “We were depend-

ing on Neil Kinnock’s cavalry coming over the horizon and we didn’t win the General Election,” Sir Richard says. “Al-though I’m not sure we would have got the cavalry anyway.”

With Plan A having failed, a Plan B was needed. “In essence, the politics didn’t change” he recalls. “The biggest challenge still was how we tackled depri-vation. If you want to reduce the politics of then and now to one word, it is ‘jobs’. So back in 1987, we had to help create the conditions that would support the private sector in job creation, and that’s what we are doing to this day.”

Oddly enough, in Manchester there was little of the us-and-them situation between the left and employers seen dur-ing the Thatcher years in places such as Coventry. Faced with austerity, they were soon singing very much from the same hymnsheet, helped by other interested parties including the universities.

The story goes that when journal-ists visit the movers and shakers today to find out what is happening in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) area, they hear the same story repeated ad nauseam. It is this unique cohesiveness of Greater Manchester’s 10 authorities which provides its undoubted bargaining power, and is why at least four other core cities are expected to follow the combined-authority route over the next few months.

The GMCA created a body large enough for Government to do business with, which is why Greater Manchester has found itself as the economic driver not only for the region it serves but for the entire North of England.

First a loose association – the Associa-tion of Greater Manchester Authorities – then a formal body welded together by legislation, the GMCA has helped the area to be in the vanguard of the City Deal.

While some of the details are still being fine-tuned in the case of Greater Man-chester – the currently unique Earnback model being the key one – it is a done deal and the next review in 2020 is set to be re-vised up in terms of getting more money rather than less out of the Treasury.

So what does Sir Richard Leese see as the biggest achievement over the last dec-ade? It is a question he has been asked many times before. “The 1980s recession kicked a lot out of the city,” he says. “A lot of its self-belief, its self-confidence had gone. Our biggest achievement has been giving the city its confidence back – ultimately the city believes in itself to do things. And that’s what we continue to convince the Government to let us do.”

City’s fresh confidence is‘our biggest achievement’

Sir Richard: long view

A big ask of the PM: hand over some more power

Sir Richard Leese, Manchester City Council leader, is still championing time-honoured causes – such as jobs – and winning them, he tells Mike Cowley

We had tohelp theprivatesector injob creation

Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight6

Computer science

When Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, president and vice-chancellor of the University of

Manchester, arrived in the city as a young neuroscientist in 1987, higher education institutions tended to be introverted, introspective places, where even the buildings faced inwards on each other.

Little wonder, then, that the na-tion’s historic seats of learning had attracted the label “ivory towers”, where intellectual pursuits often appeared disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. Things have, of course, changed – and nowhere more so than in Manchester.

The University of Manchester actively engages with the city’s most deprived areas through initiatives

such as The Works, which provides local unemployed people with the skills employers need. To date, the scheme has placed more than 1,000 long-term unemployed Mancunians in work. The university also offers one of the most generous bursary schemes, to widen participation in higher education and ensure that the brightest students, whatever their background, fulfil their potential.

Today, the university is not just a part of Manchester: it is embedded in the very fabric of the city. The partnership between the institu-tion and the city council is argu-ably stronger than that found in any other city in the UK. Professor Rothwell and her senior team have provided input to the city region’s focus and strategy. She is an active member of the city’s Local Enter-prise Partnership, and rarely a week

goes by without her discussing Manchester’s future plans with Sir Howard Bernstein, the council’s chief executive, and with council leader Sir Richard Leese.

“Manchester was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution – a period of history that changed the world forever,” Professor Rothwell says. “Ernest Rutherford split the atom at Manchester, while Alan Turing, Tom Kilburn and Sir Frederic Williams were instrumental in developing the forerunners to the modern com-puter – the ‘Baby’ and Manchester Mark 1.”

Far from resting on its laurels, however, the university has contin-ued to build on its research heritage. The Manchester Mark 1 was dubbed “the electronic brain” by the media of the time – so it is fitting that, 65 years later, Manchester is at the

How does humanintelligence work?A university team ison the old cold case, writes Mike Cowley

Understanding how the brain works is one of the grand chal-lenges of 21st-century science. Do you know what is happen-ing inside your brain as you

read this? How are you processing and possibly retaining the information in the form of memory? The answer is that you may think you know – but you almost certainly don’t.

Thanks to a team at the University of Manchester, however, we may well know in the future. The Advanced Processor Technologies group in the university’s School of Computer Science has started to unlock the secrets of how the brain works by building the world’s most ad-vanced neuro-modelling computer – code-named SpiNNaker.

SpiNNaker’s unique and complex archi- tecture seeks to replicate the way our biological brain functions, in the hope that it could lead to treatments and pos-sible cures for disorders ranging from schizophrenia and depression through to dyslexia and its lesser-known cousin dyspraxia, sometimes called the clumsy disease. What has made this impossible

in the past has been the sheer complex-ity of the brain. Even unlocking the hu-man genome, which produced six billion bits of information, only scratched the surface – the human brain is made up of 85 billion neurons or nerve cells. These react with one another by sending mes-sages known as spikes – which is why Professor Steve Furber and his 20 col-leagues in the team gave their machine the name SpiNNaker.

It is a “somewhat crude compression”, says Professor Furber, of Spiking Neural Network Architecture – and it has had one beneficial side-effect in that the name’s nautical allusion provided the project with a more understandable logo: a sail.

So by attempting to replicate the brain to find out how it works – something that has baffled scientists and clinicians since the dawn of time – the University of Manchester is arguably on the verge of one of the most important break-thoughs since humanity emerged from the primeval swamp.

Not that you would think so by speak-ing to Professor Furber, who – being foremost an academic – has the tenden-cy to play down even the most signifi-cant development.

“My group are engineers,” he says, “so our contribution is building machines and a machine itself will not solve prob-lems. But our machine will provide a platform for neuroscientists and psy-chologists to use to test their hypotheses.

So we are not replacing the biological sciences, we are merely complementing them.”

The idea of building a computer which would, at least in part, replicate the brain was first mooted at the University of Manchester as far back as 1998, but only became a reality in 2006. Seven years on and the project has been gaining real mo-mentum along with a fair share of media attention.

Professor Furber begins by explaining what his department does and what its objective is in building the SpiNNaker ma-chine. “We are historically the engineering group within computer science,” he says, “so we build the hardware and we also em-brace computer architecture, which is the way the hardware is structured.

“The ambition is to build a computer system that is particularly efficient at the job of modelling the sorts of things that are believed to be happening in the brain. We know the brain is composed of a very large number of neurons, which like basic cells are able to communicate by sending little electrical impulses to one another.

“What makes neurons unique is that they are able to grow projections that al-low them to communicate with their logi-cal rather than physical neighbours. Every so often a neuron will emit a ‘ping’. The fact that communication inside the brain consists of pings means that standard computers – although they can be pro-grammed to model brains – can’t do it very efficiently.

“What we are missing is the key under-standing of how information is processed in the brain, which is the motivation be-hind building machines, like SpiNNaker, capable of testing models and theories about how the brain might work.”

The current thinking is these connec-tions are made at a particular stage of development – possibly in the womb – so that as the brain grows and changes shape, the connections simply stay in place. “There is not enough information in the human genome to specify every connection in the brain,” Professor Furb-er says. “We currently believe that our

Applying brainpower to brainpower’s secret

Professsor Steve Furber with age-old and modern brains

We’re at a stage where this project is possible

Outward and upward: Professor Rothwell’s direction of travel

Manchester University vice-chancellor: Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 7

Graphene, the wonder mate-rial with unique properties which give it the potential to revolutionise the 21st century and transform the economy

of Greater Manchester, is no longer a dream but a reality.

The two-dimensional material consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb or chicken-wire structure. It is the thin-nest known material – and yet also one of the strongest. Graphene conducts electricity as efficiently as copper and outperforms all other materials as a conductor of heat. It is almost com-pletely transparent, but so dense that even the smallest atom, helium, cannot pass through.

Originally thought to be unstable in its free state, graphene proved to be quite the opposite when isolated at the University of Manchester by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov in 2004, work which earned them the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.

While most people still think about graphene in terms of a new wonder ma-terial – all potential, but with the prom-ise yet to come – graphene products are already out there on the market.

Graphene is currently being used commercially to produce conductive inks for the printing of electronics, but a breakthrough more likely to capture the public imagination is that graphene has already arrived on Wimbledon Centre Court – or at least on the inter-national tennis circuit.

Two of the world’s top tennis players – Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova – are not only using racquets incorpo-rating graphene, but are even endors-ing the products for the manufacturer Head. The promotional blurb extols the virtues of graphene, pointing out that the material has “a breaking strength 200 times greater than steel, which makes it the ultimate substance for cre-ating new Head tennis racquet frames with exceptional properties”.

This commercially high-profile breakthrough will be compounded by

the imminent arrival of mobile phones which use graphene-based flexible touchscreens.

All this is food and drink for Nathan Hill, the business development and strategy director for the university’s National Graphene Institute, who is keen to deliver the message that gra-phene is moving from wonder material to engineering material. There is little doubt that things have been progressing apace on the graphene front. The £61 million institute has come off the draw-ing board, with construction on the university’s campus well advanced.

New York-based Bluestone Global Tech has signed a £5m strategic partnership with the University of Manchester. The American company manufactures graphene and intends to locate its European production plant in the city, “attracting a significant number of jobs to the region”.

Several other major industrial pro-jects involving graphene are currently underway. With 15 partner companies involved – and an investment of £9m in place – there are investigations into the use of graphene as a membrane filter and in electro-chemical storage. Household-name companies involved include Crown, Sharp and Akzo Nobel.

The National Graphene Institute is also reaching out to other compa-nies. More than 300 companies have contacted it during the last year, half of them to see how graphene could be applied to their businesses. A series of workshops and events is being organ-ised to deliver answers to their technical challenges.

The University of Manchester re-mains very much on graphene’s centre stage, with groundbreaking collabora-tive research still being undertaken by Professor Geim and Professor Novo-selov and the 100-plus other scientists and engineers working with the mate-rial at Manchester.

The university even offers a PhD course in nanotechnology, where teach-ing is not restricted to research into graphene but also, just as importantly, into commercialisation of the material.

“It’s like building a bridge across a river,” says Nathan Hill. “On one side, you have scientists working on how to produce the material in large volumes, and on the other side you have those working on applications. Here at Man-chester, we are building the bridge from both sides.”

Graphene – no longer a dream

Miracle materal, below. Above: the ‘reaching out’ National Graphene Institute

genes will tell a neuron to go over there and connect to some propor-tion of what they find, but the de-tailed connections are formed on a statistical basis.

“What appears to happen is when the brain switches on and it is active, the connections actually adapt and tune their performance. We are hop-ing our project will give us as a bet-ter understanding of how this works, and how we remember things that happened more than a minute or so ago. It appears to be changes in con-nections which enable us to recall

them – so long-term memory seems to be from the formation of connec-tions, the strengthening of certain ones and the weakening of others.”

While the research is unlikely to throw up a cure for Alzheimer’s – the first symptoms normally appear when 30 per cent of the brain struc-ture is lost – it may help to detect it earlier, hence improving the chances of finding a drug to either slow down the disease or eradicate it.

The reason that Professor Furber is confident of a successful outcome for SpiNNaker – and why the mo-

ment has come to attempt it – is the advance in computer technol-ogy. “Computers are getting ever more powerful – and have been doing for half a century,” he says. “So we have now reached a stage where this project is possible.”

How big is the new computer? The answer is that it falls far short of the world’s largest, which fills an aircraft hangar-type space in China. Where SpiNNaker scores is that it is the world’s most advanced computer for neuro-modelling.

The University of Manchester team are still scaling-up the com-puter. They currently have a sys-tem which incorporates mobile phone technology – supplied by ARM in Cambridge – and links three single circuit boards with 864 processors on each board, giv-ing 2,500 processors in all. Eventu-ally, the team plans to have the ul-timate machine for its work – one that will incorporate 1,000,000 processors on 1,000 boards.

So how close are they to repli-cating a human brain? They are still a long way off, but getting there. At this point, they have the power equivalent to the number of neurons in a honey bee’s brain, which has about 850,000 neurons.

“We hope to build the maximum size required for this stage of the project over the next year,” says Professor Furber. “We have all the basic technologies working – now it is a production issue.”

The current research pro-gramme has, to date, cost in the region of £4 million, funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Once this stage of the research has been completed, it will be incorporated into the flagship EU Human Brain Project.

But while SpinNNaker promises so much, the potential benefits in terms of tackling disease are still a long way down the road. “We have built a platform to create the under-standing, then that understanding may lead to therapies being devel-oped,” Professor Furber says. “The real benefits are yet to come.”

heart of the Human Brain Project, a pan-European scientific collabo-ration to produce a supercomputer that can mimic the complexities of our biological “grey matter”.

The Human Brain Project, though a long-term venture, has the potential to provide answers for hitherto unsolved neurological conditions. Professor Rothwell’s own stroke research – for which, despite running Britain’s biggest university, she still manages to find time – could itself benefit from the project.

“Stroke is the world’s third-biggest killer and first cause of disability,” she says, “so any com-plementary research across dis-ciplines that might help us find a treatment is obviously welcome. In that respect, our size is a positive – we have both depth and breadth to our research profile, from biologi-cal and medical sciences, physical sciences, engineering and the arts and social sciences

“Collaboration both within and outside the university, with commercial, NHS and charity partners, is key if we are going to solve society’s myriad of pressing problems.”

Indeed, the University of Manchester is a national leader when it comes to converting blue-sky scientific discoveries into commercial ideas. Graphene – the 2-D wonder material with the potential to revolutionise society and which won Manches-ter two Nobel Prizes – is just one example.

The National Graphene Institute, a £61 million project supported by Government and the EU, is rapidly rising from the ground on the university campus, and has already generated im-mense excitement around the world. Meanwhile, a university spin-out company – 2-DTech – has been established to bring ap-plications of graphene and other

two-dimensional materials closer to reality.

A second example of a success-ful commercialisation venture is the Alternative Investment Market-listed Nanoco Technolo-gies Ltd, a university spin-out company that produces cadmi-um-free quantum dots for use in electronic displays. The dots are forecast to be a key component in the next generation of televi-sion and smartphone screens, and the company recently an-nounced a global licensing deal with US technology giant Dow Electronic Materials.

“Today, we find ourselves not gazing inwards,” Professor Roth-well says. “We look outwards, not only to our local communities in Manchester and the North West, but far beyond, and to how our teaching and world-class research will impact on the national and global economic, social and cultural environment.”

Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight8

Transport

Getting on yourbike is the wayto go in future,Manchester’stransport bosstells Mike Cowley

Three days a week – no mat-ter what the weather throws at him – Dave Newton can be found pounding the pedals on his hybrid commuter bike for

the nine miles along the busy A56 from his home in Altrincham to his office in central Manchester. And every even-ing on those days he makes the same 45-minute return journey by bike.

Now he is hoping, by 2025, to per-suade 10 per cent of Greater Manches-ter’s working public to use their bikes – either to go directly to work or to link up with trams, buses and trains which will take them there. Forget Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Boardman MBE for a moment – although they too are play-ing their part; here is someone unique-ly placed to ensure that Manchester, already the home of British Cycling, achieves just that.

As the person in charge of strategy at Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), Dave Newton has ensured that cycling is very much part of a mix which has seen the city rival most of its peers in ensuring that transport has be-come a key platform for regeneration.

With him at the handlebars – sorry, helm – TfGM is successfully marrying the very latest transport technologies with one of the oldest – pedal power – to ensure the smooth running of one of the largest travel-to-work areas of any city outside of London.

This, in turn, means that Greater Manchester has an economic influ-ence extending far beyond its admin-istrative boundaries, and making it the main driver for economic growth in the North of England. And much of this is contingent on having a successful transport strategy.

On his two non-cycling work days, Mr Newton travels to his office on Metrolink – the largest tram system in the UK and the runaway success of which is influencing the thinking of transport planners around the world.

In all, there are now some 26 mil-lion journeys made on Metrolink each year. Once complete, by 2016, the new network will be three times the size of the original system, covering 60 miles of track with 93 stops served by a fleet of 94 trams.

While Metrolink may well have the highest profile, Greater Manchester’s successful journey on the transport front neither starts nor ends there. Bus routes are also having a makeover, for instance. Construction work has start-

ed on Greater Manchester’s first guid-ed busway, which will be restricted to specially adapted buses to avoid traffic congestion.

Due to open in 2015, the busway – al-most three miles long – forms part of a 13-mile high-quality bus priority route being developed between Leigh, Salford and Manchester. Walkers, cyclists and horse riders will have access to a path along the entire length of the busway, surfaced for all-year use.

Ensuring even smoother running on public transport is the “get me there” scheme, the much anticipated new smart ticketing system due to be intro-duced in 2014. Passengers will touch their get me there-enabled device – be it a card or, in the future, a phone – on to a reader, which will check if they have a valid travel card or enough “pay as you go” credit in their account to travel.

Information for passengers – always a major grievance area – is also being addressed. New displays are being in-troduced at Metrolink stops to tell pas-sengers where the trams actually are – a double-edged scenario. Take this one stage further and you can see the inevi-table iPhone app looming – and indeed there is one on the way, which will use live information from the tram and rail networks along with the soon-to-be-introduced real-time bus information.

Nor have electric vehicles been for-gotten. There may still be only a few around – the estimate is approximately 2,000 in Greater Manchester of vary-

ing types, sizes and uses – but TfGM is ready. Around 250 charging points are up and running in the expected places – the city centre, the Trafford Centre and car parks – all locations where drivers

are likely to spend the three to four hours needed to charge.

Many of these breakthrough schemes have been made possible by the Greater Manchester Transport Fund, a unique £1.5 billion investment programme forecast to generate 21,000 jobs and to increase total Greater Manchester gross value added by £1.3bn per annum by 2021.

This in itself is being funded by a combination of complex grants and borrowings, with the latter to be repaid by Greater Manchester in part through contributions from future Metrolink net revenues. The fund, set up in May 2009, was instrumental in securing the “Earnback” element of the region’s City Deal with Government three years later.

The Earnback model is the first tax increment financing-style scheme in England outside London. Under this, Greater Manchester could potentially receive up to £30 million per annum for 30 years, so enabling the funding of further schemes such as the A6 to Manchester Airport relief road and the Trafford Park Metrolink line.

Transport has been high profile in Greater Manchester for many years, starting with the reconstruction needed after the IRA bombing in 1996, then for the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and finally with the Transport Innovation Fund bid: a £3bn programme, including congestion charging, that was rejected by a public referendum in 2008.

“Even our failure in the referendum meant transport was regularly on the front pages,” says Dave Newton, “and it has been there regularly ever since.”

Vélocity 2025 has helped. This on-your-bike initiative is funded from a separate £20m pot, the largest award from the Government’s Cycle City Am-bition Grant.

Cycle hubs – some of which will be located at the end of new segregated cycleways – are already sprouting up next to conventional transport sta-tions, charging as little as £10 a year to provide secure parking. For those who make it all the way into the city centre, there is a deluxe version with showers and changing rooms, allowing people to discard their sweaty cycling gear before taking the final few steps into work.

So why does cycling enthusiast Dave Newton opt to travel by tram two days a week? “When I cycle,” he says, “I get up too early to see my kids of nine and 11. Taking the tram at least allows me to spend some time with them before I head off for work.”

The man who’s reallypushing pedal power

Trust us to do the job, Prime Minister urged

The chair of the Transport for Greater Manchester Commit-tee has called on the Prime Minister, David

Cameron, to “trust us to do the job” by providing sufficient funds under the Earnback programme. Councillor Andrew Fender was responding to a question from The Times during a discussion about the anomalies in transport

funding between London and the rest of the UK.

London is treated as an exception to the funding for local transport – the result being that Greater Manchester receives less than half of the approximately £700-plus per capita of funding allocated to Transport for London.

But while Councillor Fender says he would aspire to getting

funds of this magnitude, he recog-nises that London is a distinct and separate case. “We do accept that investment in London benefits the whole country,” he says. “Yet we have already shown we can deliver, we can drive economic growth. So [the Prime Minister] can trust us with the right sums of money which will allow us to move this city region – and the national economy – forward.”

Cycling enthusiast Dave Newton includes electric vehicles in his strategy

Transport has been onthe front pages regularly since the referendum

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 9

Inward funding

There is a growing awareness thatManchester is home to one of the UK’s top biomedical clusters

Manchester’s tireless inward investment agency can claimthe credit for 12,000 jobs over three years, writes Mike Cowley

MIDAS, Manchester’s inward investment agency, does indeed – like the mytho-logical king of Greek antiq-uity whose name it shares –

have something of a golden touch.The modern MIDAS has a track re-

cord in the UK second only to London – although admittedly a long way behind the city that tops even the European investment league and whose market-ing budget makes Manchester’s look like what is left of most student grants at the end of semester.

During the past two years, MIDAS has been responsible for 150 projects – the majority involving foreign invest-ment. This translates as creating or safe-guarding some 12,000 jobs in the period from 2009 to 2012, and last year alone saw inward investment with total value of around £190 million.

Most of the investment that arrives in Manchester comes from the US, which also accounts for 50 per cent of the jobs created, while the rest of Europe contrib-utes around 30 per cent. Business servic-es have proved the most fertile ground

for European inward investment, with the sector remaining reasonably buoy-ant even in a time of austerity – not bad during a global recession when there has been little or no money around and also an increasing reluctance to spend what there is.

Then there is the realisation that MIDAS has no funding of its own to give to companies, only the expertise to attempt to leverage finance from what has been an ever-decreasing pot. That is why there has been a need to focus

on transformational projects – offering high value or the opportunity of more employment.

And MIDAS is up against not only the other core cities in the UK – while still being in the shadow of London – but also all of Europe, including some of the capitals of smaller countries where international companies want to raise their commercial standard.

What is often not recognised is that reinvestment in an area such as Man-chester is significantly strong once a company has established roots, making it even more important to get there in the first place.

In terms of the European Top 20 for inward investment, Manchester hovers around the mid-teens mark, a position it has held for several years. It is MIDAS chief executive Tim Newns who has the job of moving the city higher up that league – so he needs to, and does, play every card available to him and his team.

Foremost is the knowledge economy – the brain power in the universities that has considerable appeal to foreign companies. Then there are all the facili-ties, particularly from the life sciences and biomedical sector and almost within a stone’s throw – the Wellcome Trust, the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre, Manchester Science Park, the Christie Hospital and CMUH (Central Manches-ter University Hospitals). All play key roles in the attraction of Manchester.

The life sciences and biomedical sec-tor has proved a significantly strong hand. The growing awareness that Man-chester is home to one of the UK’s top biomedical clusters, and is the city of choice for over 200 biomedical compa-nies, plays well with anyone in the sec-tor.

Nor does it do any harm when peo-ple learn that Manchester boasts more Nobel Prize winners than Oxford and Cambridge combined.

That is why companies such as Ger-man-based multinational Qiagen have made it home to their Global Centre of Excellence for Innovative Diagnostics – and are looking to move even more facilities there from their 30 group lo-cations worldwide where they employ 3,000 people

Qiagen acquired local university spin-out company DxS in 2009, and since then have focused the facility on part-nering with pharmaceutical companies engaged in developing therapeutic prod-ucts. The Manchester operation’s speci-ality is developing tests that allow clini-cians to say which is the right drug for a particular patient – especially in the field of cancer.

This is both a potentially life-saving and cost-saving exercise – and Qiagen have already launched their first two ap-proved tests in the lucrative US market. According to Qiagen general manager Dr Allan Brown, MIDAS has supported not only the growth of the company lo-cally but also the internal business case

he made within the group for expansion at the Manchester site.

The result is that Qiagen has made a strong commitment to the Manchester location, the latest signs being the hiring of an additional 35 staff and an increase in plant space of some 25 per cent. “To be quite honest,” says Dr Brown, “this wouldn’t have happened without the help from MIDAS.”

The other impact of Qiagen arriving in Manchester has been the launch of yet another company in the sector: Pre-maitha Health, who are developing an application to carry out prenatal testing using next-generation molecular tech-nology. Dr Steve Little, the man behind it, had previously set up DxS – which was acquired by Qiagen, where he then worked for a time before striking out on his own once again.

Another success story in the life sci-ences sector is Intercytex. Dr Paul Kemp, who runs the company, is a pio-neer in the field of regenerative medi-cine, with over 25 years’ experience in the sector both in the US and the UK. He started his career in the US in the late 1980s, working on the first Food and Drug Administration-approved skin- replacement tissue, which has now been

City’s innovators helpMIDAS to go for gold

used to treat over a quarter of a million patients suffering from leg ulcers.

A biochemist with a post-doctorate degree from the University of Manches-ter, Dr Kemp returned to the city to set up Intercytex as, at the time, the uni-versity’s medical school offered the only commercially available incubator space in the country. Help was available from MIDAS, who helped Intercytex to ob-tain a £30,000 grant.

Having raised £26m to launch Inter-cytex to work on skin replacement, Dr Kemp fell foul of the bank collapse and was rescued by his then landlord, busi-ness angel and property developer Mark Caldwell, who was “very interested in life sciences”.

The relaunch in 2011 has proved more successful, and what has been effectively a fresh start-up has grown from zero revenue and a one-man operation to a team of eight with a turnover of around £1m. Working with live human tissue – grown from donors – has shown dra-matic results in terms of treating a rare blistering disease and scar contractions such as seen on Simon Weston, the well-known burns victim from the Falklands campaign.

Intercytex is also using Dr Kemp’s un-rivalled expertise in the field to generate a revenue stream by offering consultan-cy in the form of cell-to-cell “translation services”, and holds the only commercial contract licence to do this in the UK.

Having sold the hair-growth side of the business to a US company during the period of financial difficulties, Intercytex is now considering undertaking special-ist consultancy for the purchasers. The other specialist area where research is being considered is in the field of grow-ing teeth as an alternative to implants.

Meanwhile, back at MIDAS itself, football has proved to be the ace in the pack for opening doors to inward invest-ment across not just life sciences but in all sectors. “We are incredibly lucky to have the well-established brand of Manchester United – and increasingly Manchester City – here in the city,” says Tim Newns.

“When you think that Manchester United alone has 350 million fans in Chi-na, that really is some foot in the door. And I heard recently that a Manchester businessman meeting a Bedouin chief in the mountains of Libya was greeted with the response ‘Wayne Rooney’ when he said he was from Manchester.”

Just how important football is to the MIDAS mix is summed up by the com-ment from Qiagen’s Dr Brown, himself a Manchester United fan. “When our people come over from our head office in Germany,” he says, “I always get an ad-vance request for tickets.”

But while the advantages of a strong cultural profile have a part to play in Manchester’s success, as Tim Newns points out, “It is the city’s traditional strengths in science and innovation that continue to drive its international profile.”

MIDAS chief executive Tim Newns: playing every available card

Dr Allan Brown: strong commitment

Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight10

Investing

Are British sci-tech entrepreneurs let down by the system? Lucy Moore finds out

The House of Commons’ Sci-ence and Technology Commit-tee believes that UK innovation is hampered by a culture which forces entrepreneurs to sell out

to private equity investors or larger for-eign companies in order to get ideas off the ground.

As committee chair Andrew Miller, MP for Ellesmere Port, put it: “Equity invest-ments have a place, but too many compa-nies are forced into over-reliance on this route because other types of funding are unavailable.”

The issue has particular resonance in the North, where the science base was rocked by AstraZeneca closing its research facility at Alderley Park in Cheshire. In March, the drug company slashed 700 jobs and relocated 1,600 others to Cambridge. The resulting economic and prestige defi-cit has put even more focus on start-ups and SMEs (small and medium-sized en-terprises) as a source of growth.

“There is a funding gap in the UK – and investors here continue to be incredibly risk-averse,” said Robert Galvin, a direc-tor at Bio-AMD Ltd, a medical diagnos-tics company based at Sci-Tech Dares-bury. “The funding that is available is for established businesses. For a high-tech, early stage IP [intellectual property]-based company with no tangible assets, securing funding in the UK can be a real struggle.

“We’re viewed as an extremely high-risk option here, and our most recent influx of capital investment came from a US investor. The UK Government assists through bodies like the Technology Strat-egy Board, but harnessing this funding is incredibly arduous. There’s also a 50/50 chance that despite jumping through all the hoops your application won’t be suc-cessful.”

Dr Neil Murray, chief executive of Redx Pharma – an early-stage drug research company which has bases in Liverpool and, ironically, at the very laboratories recently vacated by AstraZeneca – agrees that the politicians need a reality check.

“I’ve heard one MP suggest that a life science company should be able to get to market without giving away significant eq-uity in return for capital,” said Dr Murray, whose company has been backed by high

net worth investors and the Regional Growth Fund. “You’ve got to be realis-tic – why would investors put money in without getting shares in return?”

Dr Murray regards attracting venture capital (VC) support at an early stage as virtually impossible. “Government schemes such as EIS [Enterprise Invest-ment Scheme] and SEIS [Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme], which encourage investment through tax breaks, are an excellent solution to the problem,” he said. “However, the problem comes when you try to mix EIS investment with VC funding as the company grows.

“Under EIS you are not allowed to offer preferential shares, but that’s ex-actly what VCs demand. The US tax au-thorities have resolved this issue, so the Government should make this practical change here.”

Funding Catch-22s are of course as old as enterprise itself. David Lowe, a found-er of Scarborough-based software diag-nostics company Blista Systems, knows the problem. Blista tests new software in real time as opposed to the “static” analy-sis which dominates the global market. In so doing, Blista promises programmers a more meaningful understanding of any bugs and issues, and incorporates a re-cording/replay feature which allows cod-ers to isolate failures – a genuine market innovation.

He has spoken to private investors who accept that Blista moves software testing forward, but the costs of bringing a next- generation product to market remain a barrier. “One issue is that major cus-tomers want a comprehensive support system – offices and staff to handle any enquiries,” Mr Lowe said. “We need help to get that infrastructure, but have been told variously that our overall require-ments are either too big or too small for the funds we’ve spoken to. I’m sure we’d secure funding if we had the sales – but we can’t get the sales without some fund-ing.”

It is a mark of our age that a start-up tech company receiving bank support is considered implausible. “Approach-ing your bank for a loan like people may have done 20 years ago isn’t really even an option for an early-stage IP business any more,” said Robert Galvin.

“The risks are much too high for banks and most banks wouldn’t even entertain an overdraft without significant personal guarantees. So the options are next- generation investment sources like crowd funding and peer-to-peer investment.”

Who oughtto fund theknowledgeeconomy?

Chris Brinsmead, the former president of AstraZeneca UK, has been appointed chairman of Proveca, the pharmaceutical firm which re-engineers existing medicines to make them appropriate for use by young people.

He brings over 30 years’ experi-ence in big pharma. This includes serving as president of the Associa-tion of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, advising the Government

on life science policy and supporting a raft of pharmaceutical and medical companies. Proveca, which is based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, is developing medicines in the fields of cardiology, neurology and pain management, largely for children.

“Proveca is making strides,” Mr Brinsmead said, “and I’m confident that my experience and expertise will greatly help with its further develop-ment.”

The wealth management sector is undergoing a wave of mergers and acquisitions as buyers and sellers seek advan-

tage in greater size, while rising regulatory demands also threaten to make the management task too heavy for small firms.

One of the most eye-catching deals thus far has created Quilter Cheviot, now one of the country’s largest independently owned wealth managers, with more than £14.2 billion of assets under management. “This was a genuine merger,” said David Rothburn, head of the Man-chester office.

“In takeover situations, one party typically ends up adopt-ing all the processes and culture of the other. In our situation, it was about taking a constructive appraisal of each other. We took

the best from both worlds, cre-ating an enlarged business with an improved proposition.”

The merger gained approval from the Financial Conduct Authority in December 2012. Formal legal completion took place in January 2013, with the new brand identity unveiled in July. The combined North West business currently has £1.2bn of funds under management, with offices in Manchester, Liverpool and North Wales. The company also has a sizeable Midlands presence – offices in Leicester and Birmingham, which have some £1.74bn of assets under management.

“The co-operation began once we knew we were get-ting together,” Mr Rothburn said. “We set up joint steering groups, taking the best brains from both sides to look at individual issues. It meant that,

by the time the formal legal merger was completed, Quilter Cheviot hit the ground running.

“The two businesses comple-ment each other. Our regional network was well established, and the only regional overlap was Liverpool, where the new operation has consolidated in the St Paul’s Square develop-ment. In terms of culture, Quilt-er came from a background of being owned by a banking group. Cheviot developed in an environment that perhaps gave them more ability to be spontaneous.”

He agrees with sector ana-lysts who predict more firms joining forces. “My personal impression is that we are still operating in a consolidating market, but from our perspec-tive we want to grow organical-ly while not ruling out further acquisitions.”

John Downes, chief executive of Langtree and director of the Sci-Tech Daresbury joint venture board, points to angel in-vestors and high net worth individuals as other options.

Andrew Morgan, a partner at Grant Thornton, believes the issue requires an international context. “The UK is the envy of Europe when it comes to incentives and support programmes for tech start-

ups,” he said. “The combination of grow-ing technology hubs like Tech City and the package of tax reliefs and incentives across research and development, Patent Box and SEIS, and a lower corporate tax regime, has seen the number of start-ups in the UK hitting record levels.

“It is still early days for many of these programmes, but they are being used to good effect.”

New chair brings long experience

Quilter Cheviot rolls out Northern business

An aerial view of Sci-Tech Daresbury – home to Proveca and over 100 high-tech companies

We’d securethe funding if we had the sales but wecan’t get the sales without the funding

the times | Tuesday October 1 2013 11

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Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight12

�� British Business Embassy – 5-6 June 2014 Showcasing the best of British business over two days, officially endorsed by the Prime Minister and delivered by UKTI, the event will help businesses to develop connec-tions with international markets.��MADE – 10 June The UK manufacturing awards event, MADE will showcase the best design and product development across the UK. �� International Trade Expo – June 10-11 The UK’s major business event dedi-cated to export and import. Some

2,000 delegates will share intel-ligence on how to support existing international business and encour-age new enterprises into overseas markets.�� Undersea Defence Technology – 10-12 June The annual UDT exhibition and conference is the global event for the undersea defence and security com-munity. It brings together profession-als from across the military, industry and academia.��Global Leaders Summit – 17-19 June More than 200 city leaders from around the world will come together

for three days to debate the opportu-nities and challenges facing cities in the 21st century. ��World Corporate Games – 26-29 June This four-day event will attract more than 8,000 delegates from blue-chip companies and international industry bodies. The event aids the realisa-tion of how sports and games can revolutionise business.�� Federation of Small Businesses National Council – 2 July This will be the most significant small business event of 2014. �� Cruise Business – 9-13 July A three-day event for executives and senior management from the international cruise travel sector, and

including a consumer cruise that will be attended by 20,000 people.��Dream Factory – 15-17 July Dream Factory is a brand new three-day event, combining movie premieres, expert masterclasses and a gala dinner, promoting the film industry in the North of England.�� Sound City Digital – 15-17 July Sound City Digital will take an in-depth look at the game-changing impact that the digital revolution is having on the global music industry.�� International Sport Business Con-gress – 21-22 July An event where the diverse global sports sector meets business, com-merce and leading academics and analysts to identify the latest trends

in sports, economics, branding and media.�� Sony World Photographic Exhibition – May 31-June 29 The world’s largest photographic exhibition and awards, normally held in London and expected to attracted 20,000 people.��Regen Europe – 11-12 June A 32-speaker conference attracting leading regeneration experts from both the private and public sectors across Europe.�� All Our Futures – 16-20 June Headteachers from around the world gather to share best practice and visit regional schools to learn, network and inspire.

Prime Minister David Cameron is backing the IFB 2014 and has issued a rallying call for businesses to get involved. “I’m delighted to be able to show my support for the International Festival for Business,” he said. “With more than a quarter of a million of visitors expected in Liverpool, this is going to be an event on an unprec-edented scale. For anyone involved in enterprise, the IFB is the place to be.

Make sure you’re there to make the most of it.”

Companies can get involved in IFB 2014 in a number of ways. For general enquiries, email info@ifb2014.com; for sponsorship enquiries, contact James Gower on +44 (0)207 384 8196 or email james.gower@ifb2014.com; for more information, go to www.ifb2014.com. You can also follow IFB on twitter: @ifb2014

Some of Britain’s biggest business champions and most prominent entre-preneurs have pledged their support for the International Festival for Business 2014. Official ambassadors for IFB 2014 include John Allan, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses; Sir Howard Bernstein, chief execu-tive of Manchester City Council; Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the Home Civil Service and permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Lo-cal Government; Sir Terry Leahy, for-

mer chief executive, Tesco; Phil Orford, chief executive of the Forum of Private Business; and Russ Shaw, founder, Tech London Advocates.

Also joining the ambassadors are a group of founder chief executives of some of the UK’s fastest-growing entrepreneurial businesses, including Paul Lindley, chief executive of Ella’s Kitchen; Henrietta Lovell, founder of the Rare Tea Company; and Julie Deane, founder of the Cambridge Satchel Company.

It’s now less than a year away: thatLiverpool-hosted festival showcasingthe global appeal of British business

The Government’s mission to drive export growth will receive a major boost next summer when the International Festival for Business (IFB) 2014 show-

cases the best of British industry on a global stage.

The festival, which will be the largest event of its kind ever held in the UK, has already confirmed more than 50 events and will see 250,000 visitors from across the world descend on Liverpool city re-gion over six weeks in June and July. The organiser, Liverpool Vision, expects to confirm many more events in the coming months.

Partners in the project include the Confederation of British Industry, UKTI (UK Trade & Investment), British Cham-bers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses. A range of high-profile ambassadors from key industries and leading business organisations are also backing the festival.

The event will be a global showcase for British industry across multiple sec-tors and will champion UK companies to new markets and partners. The IFB is re-garded as a key part of the Government’s ambition to promote economic growth and to double exports by 2020.

Max Steinberg, chair of IFB 2014, said the programme was already exceeding expectations. Hundreds of thousands of other visitors are expected to visit the city region during the same period, for an as-sociated cultural programme and for the Open Golf Championship at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake.

Highlights of the programme include a Global Leaders’ Summit, when the civic, political and business leaders from the

world’s 50 leading cities will gather to discuss the challenges facing cities, re-gions and countries. UKTI will also be showcasing the best of British business over two days when it stages the Brit-ish Business Embassy. This was a hugely successful part of Britain’s 2012 Olympic business legacy, attracting some 4,000 global business figures. It will be just one of 12 UKTI events scheduled for the IFB.

The Prime Minister, David Cam-eron, said: “It’s an opportunity for peo-ple around the world network to build contacts and, yes, do deals. It’s a great chance for British businesses to show what they are made of. Once again, this

Business festival

Business champions back IFB 2014Backing: David Cameron

We punchabove our weight acrossthe world

PM urges businesses to get involved

is a country that makes things, invents things and sells things to the rest of the world.

“And this is a shop window like no other. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for foreign investors to see Britain at its best because we are rolling out a red carpet for companies that are coming to this country and we are saying to the world: Britain is open for business.”

Detailed appraisals are being carried out to ensure smooth transport, venue and event organisation, with visitors experiencing the best the region has to offer. Individual conferences and exhibi-tions will be held at venues throughout the city region, with events also being held in other parts of the North West.

The IFB will have a focus on key UK business sectors and themes, including maritime, logistics and energy, higher education, manufacturing, science and technology, professional and financial services, low carbon and renewables, along with creative and digital.

“Britain punches above its weight around the world,” said John Cridland, director-general of the CBI, but we are only 60 million in a seven billion world, so we have to make ourselves well known, we have to shout pretty loud and I can’t think of a better place to be doing that than Liverpool.”

John Allan, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, believes it is vital that Britain’s small businesses receive the encouragement they need to start operating internationally. “Next year’s International Festival for Business,” he said, “will play an important role in selling Great Britain and its businesses to the world.”

Phil Orford, chief executive of the Fo-rum of Private Business, added: “Britain plays an important role on the global stage and initiatives that celebrate great British industry are vital to highlight its prominent position. That is why I’m supporting the International Festival for Business, which will be a fantastic show-case of all that Britain has to offer.”

On their marks... for Enterprise Olympiad

Some of the confirmed events

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 13

TODAY’S STUDENTS,TOMORROW’S SUCCESSFUL WOMENVisit Manchester High School for Girls’ Open Events this autumn when you can meet staff and pupils, and tour our facilities.

MHSG OPEN EVENTS 201310th Oct 6pm – 8.30pm (Senior School)16th Oct 10am – 12.30pm (Whole School)7th Nov from 2.30pm (Sixth Form - by appointment)(Sixth Form - by appointment)16th Nov 10am – 12.30pm (Whole School)21st Nov 10am – 12.30pm (Whole School)

Junior and Senior Entrance Examination 14th January 2014

To attend, please call 0161 224 0447 or to receive a prospectus visit www.manchesterhigh.co.uk/welcome - Scholarships and means-tested bursaries are available for girls aged 11 to 18.

Grangethorpe Road, ManchesterM14 6HS / Tel 0161 224 0447

manchesterhigh.co.uktwitter @mhsg

facebook.com/ManHighSGCharity registration no: 532295

Because they’re worth itWhen ‘public’ means ‘private’The three main labels for fee-paying schools in Britain can be confus-ing: are they private, independent, or – most confusingly – public schools? “It’s a historical term from the seventeenth century,” says Neil Roskilly, head of the Independent Schools Association, as he explains that the system has almost turned upside-down.

“At that earlier time, when most schooling otherwise had to be paid for, they were truly public – or charity – schools. But by the time the free state education system was introduced, the ‘public schools’ had grown in prestige and were often in receipt of fees.”

So what is the correct terminology these days? “Most of us now prefer the term ‘independent’,” Mr Roskilly says, “as you will see from the title of our association”.

It’s no easy choice for budget-awareparents, but takingup independent schooling can bea life-enhancinginvestment, says Alex McDiarmid

Now’s the time, if you are weighing up the pros and cons of this or that style of education for your off-spring, to take in an open

day (or two) at the private schools that promise to turn out the profes-sional leaders of tomorrow. Future success guaranteed.

Of course, it’s not as easy as that. The options may sound simple – stretch to grasp a perceived advan-tage, or stay relatively unstressed financially within the state system – but coming up with the right decision can be complicated and challenging.

Nothing gets parents so agonised as the question of whether or not to embrace private education at the cost of raising detractors’ eye-brows – and everyone knows there are also much larger literal costs involved. What’s to afford? Across the UK, annual per-pupil fees aver-age nearly £12,000 for day schools and nearly £27,000 for boarding

schools. So the question for all those who would aspire to raise their sights is: Can it be worth it?

And while the word “elite” passes many a curled lip in this context, the number of people pre-pared to consider the independ-ent system is perhaps surprisingly high. If they could afford it, more than half of parents questioned in a recent survey said they would “invest” in sending their child to one of Britain’s 2,500 independ-ent schools – of which 165 are in the North of England, with a total of 2,420 boarders and 22,695 day pupils.

This result came from a sample of average people surveyed by the over-arching Independent Schools Council (ISC), which has eight member-associations – the Girls’ Schools Association, the Head-masters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, the Independent As-sociation of Prep Schools, the So-ciety of Heads, the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools, the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association, the Council

of British International Schools and the Independent Schools As-sociation.

Interestingly, the ISC’s priorities for 2013 have been “to champion and channel sector consensus on public examinations and national curriculum frameworks; and to protect and promote the sector’s in-terests on charitable status, public benefit and social mobility”.

Ah. Social mobility. There’s an emotive and loaded term. Support-ers of it say fee-paying schools offer a broader choice, better results and a nurturing of children neglected by the state system.

Why? Such schools are seen, at least by that group, as simply of-fering better education, better dis-cipline and – crucially, as a con-sequence – better life and career prospects. That’s apart from the study-inducing and perhaps self-starting ambience engendered by expansive grounds, dreaming spires and the occasional swimming pool.

There are also undeniable facts to consider, such as impressive exam results at GCSE and A-level

Independent education in the North of England

Manchester High School for Girls

Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight14

Independent education in the North

At Stonyhurst we offer unparalleled opportunities for the development of outstanding individuals.

Our students achieve outstanding results. This year: 43% of A levels graded A* or A, and 69% A*-B. GCSE results were the best ever: with 48% graded A* or A. Five of our leavers are destined for Oxford, and one for Harvard. We now offer the IB as well as A levels.

We have a national reputation for rugby, hockey and netball. Our musicians recently toured to Europe and the Far East and drama and dance are exceptional. 119 of our pupils qualifi ed in the past twelve months for a Duke of Edinburgh’s award.

This wealth of opportunities: 100 clubs and societies each week, distinguished visiting speakers each term and close one-to-one tutorial support, help to develop character and expand horizons. The strong leadership qualities our pupils develop is temperedwith a thoughtful awareness of others. Our impressive network of parents and alumni also offers extraordinary opportunities for work experience to pupils.

For particularly talented young people, Stonyhurst offers a range of scholarships for entry at 11+, 13+ and 16+.

Why not come and see for yourself what Stonyhurst may be able to do for you?

Developing outstanding individuals

Open DaySW

O R L D S CH

OO

L

A Co-educational Catholic Boarding and Day School for 3–18 year olds01254 827073 admissions@stonyhurst.ac.uk

Stonyhurst Clitheroe Lancashire BB7 9PZ

www.stonyhurst.ac.uk

Red is Pantone© 1945 U

Grey is Pantone 425U

Black for documents created for internal use

C M Y K

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195 0 63

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Using your School Branding System©

Format Application

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supplied formats PMS CMYK BLACK

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supplied formats CMYK/RGB

Colour palette

PMS 1945 U red and 425U grey White out of 425U and 1945U Black solid

BRANDING EXCELLENCE FOR SCHOOLS www.reed-bc.co.uk

The logoThis is the new logo for all members of the Jesuit Institute group of schools and should be used across all communications materials within the school to help promote the links with the Jesuit Institute.It is designed as a unit with the ‘sunburst’ crest and the lettering. They must be kept as one unit. These 2 elements should never be used in different proportions to those shown below. They can appear discretely and we would recommend they feature no smaller than 35mm wide.There are 3 versions of the logo supplied on your CD, including a black version. They are shown below. The logo should not be used in any other colourway or distorted. However it can be scaled in proportion.We have also created an extra logo artwork for use when applied to uniform and is being stitched or embroidered.

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are not meant to be edited but can be sent to suppliers to use when they produce

items where the graphics and your branding can be applied. EPS files can still

be ‘placed’ in documents built using applications such as Publisher, InDesign or

QuarkXpress. For further imformation regarding usage or training please contact

Reed Brand Communication.

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phone: 020 8542 9494 email: info@reed-bc.co.uk

Open Days on Saturday October 5th (ages 3–13)and Saturday November 16th (ages 13–18)

Trial boarding weekend (ages 7–12)on 12th/13th October

and figures such as over 90 per cent of pupils from ISC schools going on to university.

As well as academic rigour, there is believed to be a vitally different attitude among pupils. In the words of one mother who made the switch: “Our clever son seemed depressed about feeling that it wasn’t cool to be smart at the state school; so we moved him aged nine to an independent school where there is a different culture – where pupils don’t tease each other for doing well academically. And that made a big difference.”

This month’s series of open days might go some way towards answering the “is it worth it?” ques-tion, but Neil Roskilly, chief executive of the Inde-pendent Schools Association – which has a North-ern membership of more than 50 schools among over 300 listed – has some sage advice for parents

believing they can assess a school from its open day. “Remember, a school is on its best behaviour that day and only really shows what it wants you to see,” he says. “Which is not to say it won’t be great; but you have to be satisfied it suits your child – so I would suggest a separate meeting, preferably on a one-to-one basis with a teacher, and preferably with the headteacher. That’s the key to getting it right.”

You might, after all, be about to spend masses of money on a service that can be acquired at rates from zero (state school) to over £30,000 a year. So once you have decided to eschew the state option with its merciful non-impact on your bank balance, value for money is the next logical thing to pursue. Mr Roskilly believes wise economic choices can be made among independent schools, and less well-

known ones can often offer relatively more value. “A school can be outstanding in every category of inspection and have low fees,” he says. “Parents should check inspection reports carefully, as they could find that a lesser-known private school in their area could provide great value for money and also offer an excellent potential outcome for their child.”

The relevant figure there could be £7,500 a year, which Mr Roskilly cites as reasonably affordable as compared with the upper-end figure “which only certain people can afford”, and which he feels can

create an unfortunate elitism that exacerbates so-cial differences in society and gives “a wrong view of what private education is all about”.

Plainly put, he thinks private schooling can offer a quality of service that is – within reason and with-in family budgets – worth working hard for. In that way, it represents choice that may require sacrifice. “Only the parents can decide if that’s worth it,” he says, “but it can’t be denied that a child stands a much better chance of getting to university and do-ing well in later life thanks to his or her parents’ investment in their schooling.”

Andrew Johnson, headmaster of Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, has a few answers to that question. “Firstly, independent schools tend to be places where there’s passion, drive and com-mitment,” he says. “And they stand or fall on their own efforts; we have to make it work and so that is where some of that stuff comes in.

“Secondly, we take exceptional trouble to re-cruit and retain excellent staff, as it’s the quality of your people who are going to give you that edge and make you successful. Thirdly, we get a huge benefit from having very committed and supportive parents – who, after all, are investing their money in their children’s education – and that commitment helps an awful lot.

“Then we focus on people as individuals and on knowing them really, really well. So we get to know their strengths to help them flourish. Having smaller classes obviously helps in that regard. If you have 20 or 15 people in front of you, rather than 30, that has got to be beneficial.

“Finally, we offer a vast array of opportu-nities outside the classroom – sport, music, drama, clubs and societies – so it’s all about broadly developing our pupils as well-rounded people and simultaneously bringing out their leadership ability and self-confidence.”

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independ-ent Schools Council, says quite directly: “In-dependent schools are good value for money. Most fee-charging schools are expensive, but this money is well spent.

We employ excellent teachers. Schools make little surplus on fee income – even boarding schools charging £30,000 a year make little profit because they are providing three meals a day, 24-hour medical care, activities in the eve-nings and weekends, and laundry. But we are aware that fees are a struggle for many parents and ISC schools last year provided more than £620 million in fee assistance, helping over 33 per cent of pupils at our schools.”

What gives the independent sector the edge?

Putting the fun into learning: Pupils enjoy a physics ‘game’ at Stonyhurst College

Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 15

Independent education in the NorthBRADFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL

An independent selective day school for girls and boys aged 6 - 18

Our pupils gain so much more than academic success

Open Day 5 October 2013 - 10am - 4pm

For further information contact the Registrar, Karen Hewitt on 01274 553702

Bespoke tours can be pre-booked or general tours are available throughout the day

www.bradfordgrammar.com

We are looking for Yorkshire’s fi nest young people aged between six and 18. Here at Bradford

Grammar School, we are proud to nurture individuals to be the best they can be.

It is important to us that our pupils fulfi l their potential and enjoy their time here. We do this through inspirational teaching which helps to make learning fun.

The school week offers a huge array of activities to broaden minds and expand experiences, which will help to prepare Bradford Grammar School pupils for life after school. At the heart of the school is an under-standing of our local communities in the wider world and a willingness to serve those communities.

We believe that the combina-tion of academic success and the

knowledge and ability to work well with others prepares our students well for their future lives and careers.

The school has excellent transport links, with dedicated buses and direct train services to Friz-inghall. From March 2015, this will include a direct line from the new Apperley Bridge train station. Our 25-acre site is fi lled with superb facilities that are brought to life by inspi-rational teachers. Our pupils gain

so much more than outstanding academic success.�� For further information contact the registrar, Karen Hewitt, on 01274 553702.www.bradfordgrammar.com

The making of individuals

Enthusiasm personifi edby top pupils

Sailing into the future with superb facilities

We help young people tofulfi l their potential.

To fi nd out more visit one of our

OPEN MORNINGSfrom 09.00 - 12.00 on

FRIDAY 4 OCTOBERLYNDHURST PRE-PREP (ages 4-6)

SATURDAY 5 OCTOBERLYNDHURST & POCKLINGTON (ages 6-18)

Tuesday October 1 2013 | the times

Business Insight16

Profi le�� Co-educational day school.�� Educating girls and boys from 7-18 years of age in Cheshire and North Wales.

Results�� Top-performing co-ed school in the North of England at A-level in 2013. �� 81 per cent of pupils go on to The Times Top 30 universities and 75 per cent to Russell Group universities.�� Inspiring curriculum with interna-tional GCSE programme.�� £1.2m Vanbrugh Theatre.

�� Enrichment programme of over 40 options including Arabic, ethics and science journalism.�� 26 sports on offer with over 1,000 fi xtures per year.�� Second-top UK co-ed rowing school and third-top UK girls’ rowing school.�� Purpose-built music school with over 24 music ensembles.

Alumni�� Seven former Olympians, includ-ing double Olympic gold medallist Tom James.�� Sir John Vanbrugh, dramatist and architect of Blenheim Palace.

��Martin Lewis, money-saving expert.�� Steve Leonard, TV vet.�� Ronald Pickup, actor.��Matthew Hancock, Government minister.��Olivia Whitlam, double Olym-pian.

“Smaller classes are an important factor in improving our students’ results and educational experience. At King’s Chester our optimum class size enables a perfect balance of teacher attention and pupil interaction.” –James Millard, deputy head (academic), The King’s School.

Fact fi le – The King’s School, Chester

Independent education in the North

The King’s School in Chester is not only remarkable for being the top-performing co-ed school in the North of England at A-level in 2013, as outside the classroom it has produced seven Olympian pupils – including rowing gold medalist Tom James.

How has this been achieved? “An investment in 12 acres of sports facilities, a rowing boathouse and outstanding coaching enable us to offer 26 sports, competing region-ally and nationally in over 1,000 fi xtures a year,” says Richard Lunn,

the school’s director of sport. “This nurtures talent and results in such Olympian success.”

It goes without saying that inde-pendent schools are fi ercely proud of the quality of their teachers – regularly inspected by a vari-ety of professional bodies – and

“Barnaby Lenon, Chairman of the Independent Schools Council, points out that independent schools give the opportunity and freedom to teach to a high academic level without hav-ing to follow the national curriculum. But for the best, there is even more to it than that.

“Excellent teaching is at the heart of what we do and ensures that our girls are engaged, motivated, stretched and challenged,” says Claire Hewitt, headmistress at Manchester High School for Girls. “Members of staff are outstanding subject specialists with a passion for what they teach, and they encourage pupils to develop a genuine love of learning, a ‘can do’ at-titude, confi dence and a commitment to doing their very best. High-quality teaching is key to our aspirational at-mosphere.”

David Elstone, head of Hymers College, a co-ed independent school on the site of the old Botanic Gardens in Hull, says: “Sharing with parents in

the guiding and development of young lives is a privilege we value highly.”

Which is a signifi cant thought sym-pathetic to the idea of pastoral care, a relatively recent addition to the plus-points of independent schooling. That is, working with pupils from the heart as well as the brain, appreciat-ing and helping with their problems – whether academic, social, vocational, or behavioural.

What are the effects of lower pupil:class ratios? The issue of class sizes has exercised parents for decades – and in offering one teacher for every 9.4 pupils, com-pared with one to 17.6 in the state sys-tem, the independents are perceived to be well in front. With classes often numbering just 20 pupils as against 30-plus in many state primaries, it is cited as the “most common reason given by parents to take their chil-dren out of the state school system and go into the independent sector,” by Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers.

Right at the chalkface, Vincent Sharples, director of studies at Stony-hurst College, confi rms that “small classes and close individual atten-tion are of enormous benefi t to our students”. He adds: “We get to know them extremely well so we can mo-tivate each one to achieve their per-sonal best.”

And Chris Ramsey, headmaster of The King’s School, Chester, says: “One thing we emphasise here is that

The school with the golden touch

Teach for the skiesevery student should get some indi-vidual teacher attention every lesson. Class sizes are important – and lots of parents make that their key considera-tion when choosing a school. For jun-iors – at primary level – up to around 24 pupils is much, much better than 30 (even with a classroom assistant). The teacher has the overview of pro-gress and his or her attention is vital.

“At senior schools – after 11-plus – children again need classes not to be too big. A big part of the success of independent schools such as King’s is that we limit our class sizes to the

mid-20s. Coupled with some setting by ability, it means there are oppor-tunities for whole-class teaching with-out disruption, and individual atten-tion.

“At sixth form, funnily enough, you can have classes that are too small. Around a dozen is optimum – enough to generate discussion between like-minded minds, but not so many that you can’t be heard. One or two can be counter-productive – a little bit over-intense. We have class sizes of 10-12 normally, and we think that’s spot-on.”

Claire Hewitt, head of MHSG

their lives forever

Give your child the best possible start in lifeat The King’s School, Chester. A vibrant,inspirational and academic environment forgirls and boys, aged 7-18.

Call: 01244 689 553Email: admissions@kingschester.co.uk

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Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 17

The Merchant Taylors’ Schools, Crosby; a company limited by guarantee.Registered in England: Company Number 6654276Registered Office: 186 Liverpool Road, Crosby, Liverpool L23 0QPRegistered Charity Number: 1125485

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Business Insightthe times | Tuesday October 1 2013 19

Admissions Office, Hymers College, Hymers Avenue, Hull HU3 1LW

An Educational Charity Registered No 529820-R

T: (01482) 343555 E: enquiries@hymers.orgwww.hymerscollege.co.uk

Open MorningSaturday 12th October 2013

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Outstanding examination results

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Independent Education for pupils aged 8 to 18

HYMERSCOLLEGE

Independent education in the North

Where the head is quite a sport

Being a former international sports-woman, Cheadle Hulme School’s headteacher Lucy Pearson is well qualifi ed to talk about the impor-tance of sport in the formation of a pupil’s character.

She was the opening bowler for the England women’s cricket team from 1996 until 2005, achieving a record 11-wicket haul in the second Ashes Test at Sydney in 2003, as well as twice being named Player of the Year.

The comprehensive ap-proach to sport for its own sake is espoused by Stonyhurst College’s head of sport, Simon Charles.

“Our approach and values help in-dividuals to become excellent team players,” he says. “We have several current internationals and very many of our pupils develop a life-long love of sport.”

There is also the view of its pro-jection into other areas of society, as expressed by Lucy Pearson, head of Cheadle Hulme School. She has a ten-year strategic plan to keep her school at the cut-ting edge of independent educa-tion through advanced in-class technology and innovation in the curriculum, but as a notable sportswoman (see panel) she puts a strong emphasis on the impor-tance of sport.

“The independent sector has always valued the whole person,” she says. “So it has always been about more than just what goes on in the classroom. It is also about the sports fi eld – where lifelong lessons are learned. Whether you

call that character or sportsman-ship or active lifestyle, I think it echoes with that sense that the independent sector has been about more than just academic qualifi cations.

“Sport teaches team and indi-vidual responsibility; it develops the concept of pride – in your yourself, teammates, school, something to which you belong. And fi nally, because it helps build

strong relationships, teaching people how to communicate, how to deal with confl ict – and even how to lose and how to manage that. All things that you come across in the workplace and ca-reer.

“Sometimes children fi nd los-ing very diffi cult, but they have to realise that’s just part of life. So resilience is a key quality we seek to nurture through sport.”

It’s not all about the three Rs. Josh Fernandez, a Year Nine pupil at Hymers College in Hull, has been using his school-fostered intelligence for more than passing exams. When he was a member of the junior chess club, he played the seniors – and often beat them.

He has recently returned from Poland where he represented England at chess – against teams from as far afi eld as Russia and Ukraine. “We didn’t win anything,” he admits. But his fans point out that he is well worth watching next time.

On the move – to chess champion

Achieving worthwhile goals at Cheadle Hulme

Winning the game of life

Paul Ogden

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