North West Business Leadership Team

Fantastic news from our strategic partner Glass Futures and NWBLT member Encirc, who have taken a significant step forward in toward improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions within energy-intensive industries, supporting our region's economy, and the UK’s goal to transition towards net zero.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Chris Woodroofe, the Managing Director of Manchester Airport, to our board. Chris joined Manchester Airport in June 2022 having previously served as Chief Operating Officer at London Gatwick Airport, where he led numerous successful people, process and system change programmes. Chris commented: “My membership of the NWBLT has been invaluable to me as a leader and to Manchester Airport as a business, and I’m delighted to deepen this relationship by joining the board. “At Manchester Airport we often talk about how proud we are to connect the North to the world, because connectivity is at the heart of everything we do. The same is true of the NWBLT. As a connected business community, we can achieve so much more for this region than we can in isolation". We are also pleased to welcome to the NWBLT Hilary Heap of EY and Professor Richard Jones from The University of Manchester. Hilary Heap is EY’s North Market Leader and Managing Partner of the company’s Manchester office, from where she leads a team of more than 2,000 people across the north of England. Professor Richard Jones is Vice President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement at the University of Manchester. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006 and has written extensively about the role of science and innovation policy in supporting productivity growth and addressing regional economic disparities. Welcoming the appointments, NWBLT chair Simone Peppi said “We are delighted to welcome Chris to our board. The success of Manchester Airport underpins so much of the prosperity of our region and Chris brings tremendous insight, expertise and commitment to our region and the NWBLT. We are looking forward to his contribution to the board. We’re also pleased to welcome Hilary and Richard as new representatives to the NWBLT from EY and University of Manchester. We’re looking forward to benefiting from their perspectives as we continue to drive innovation, collaboration, and prosperity across the North West”. https://lnkd.in/eqYH-DGM

At a time when achieving growth is top of the agenda, reliable data to identify growth potential is more important than ever. We were pleased to welcome to our Quarterly Team Meeting, Simon Hooton, Managing Director, and Nathan Shoesmith from GC Insight. They shared with us the findings of the recent Growth Flag report, which supports the identification of high growth potential businesses, and how using this data can help to understand growth opportunities within specific sectors and geographies. Our dinner speaker was Mark Betteridge of the GMB. GMB is Britain’s general union, with 600,000 members from across all industrial sectors, and so brings a cross sectoral view to discussions on growth. We reflected as a group on the opportunities that moving to a Net Zero economy presents for the North West, but awareness of the concurrent challenge of a just transition, one in which the people of our region are equipped with the skills, resilience and capabilities they need.

Great to see NWBLT's Andy Hulme FRSA alongside NWBLT members Rachel O'Donnell and Michelle Lewis, together with our strategic partners Net Zero North West and Glass Futures, all taking part in this important roundtable.

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In today’s guest blog we hear from Chris Mayne, Managing Director of Teleplan Forsberg, who explains the motivation behind and the success of the Electech Innovation Cluster in Lancashire. The cluster has a mission; ‘For our region of Morecambe Bay, Lancaster and South Lakeland to be known for its excellence in Electronics technology. Where businesses can thrive because of the local resources and connections’. You can read the blog in full on our website: https://lnkd.in/eFAGs9Zh The cluster now consists of 34 members and on 26 March at The Storey in Lancaster will be holding the Electech Innovation Cluster conference in partnership with NWBLT member Lancaster University.

At the NWBLT, we know that effective business leaders deliver better places – championing innovation to support inclusive growth and improved productivity – while ensuring a more sustainable economy where everyone can flourish.  As such, the NWBLT seeks to champion initiatives that create a more diverse workforce, and a more productive economy for our region and ultimately, our country. This International Women’s Day, Kirsty Rogers, Co-Chair of the NWBLT’s Rising Stars, and member of the NWBLT board, reflects on the progress we have made towards gender equality in the workplace, what more there remains to do, and the role that NWBLT has to play. As Kirsty reflects upon the success of the NWBLT Rising Stars, she also welcomes Andrew Milne CEO of Nichols plc as her new co-chair. We're pleased to reaffirm NWBLT's commitment to the Rising Stars, and Andrew's appointment will further strengthen the programme’s impact, ensuring that more aspiring leaders—are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and networks they need to excel. You can read her blog in full on our website https://lnkd.in/eeQVWBv7 Katie Bray (Robins), Nicola Kenyon, Andrew Milne

This week marked three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A moment to reflect—but also to recognize the incredible efforts of those who have stepped up to support Ukrainian refugees in rebuilding their lives. NWBLT is proud to have played a role in establishing United For Ukraine , a vital initiative that has helped thousands of Ukrainians find employment and stability in the UK. For Ukrainian nationals, this initiative provides a searchable list of vacancies with employers who have committed to providing good job opportunities in a supportive environment and for employers, this initiative provides an easy and direct way to communicate job opportunities to Ukrainian nationals coming to the UK. So far, United for Ukraine has supported 5,600 users through the United for Ukraine project, with 703 known job starts through Restart for Ukraine and United for Ukraine together.

The availability of skills and talent has the potential to either boost or hamper our ambitions for future growth. The ambition for the NWBLT’s People & Skills programme is to help to secure the workforce that our region’s businesses need for today and tomorrow. In yesterday's virtual session we welcomed Erica Chamberlain from the The Careers & Enterprise Company, in a session supporting our collaborative approach between industry and policy makers. Good, outcomes focussed, careers education is vital for the long-term success of the people who call our region home, and NWBLT members will continue to advocate for meaningful work experiences that support young people to make informed choices about potential career pathways and awareness of growth industries within the region. 

Members of NWBLTs Innovation and Growth Group met this week for a session focussed on identifying key opportunities and barriers to growth in the region. It was a really rich conversation and amongst the areas highlighted were: -   *The benefits of working with SME business owners and leaders to develop a growth mindset, and better signposting to where they can get help to do that. In the past NWBLT has worked on this in collaboration with Be the Business through their Virtual Boards programme. *Linked to this is the important value that effective Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) can bring to scale ups. *The increasing trend towards AI and big data seems unstoppable, but many businesses aren’t read to ‘cope’ with this or understand how it can support their growth journey. *‘Big Business’ can have more scope and flexibility to share its knowledge and experience with SMEs. Especially those in their supply chains. How is this best done and targeted and how is greater collaboration encouraged? *Taking a challenge-based approach to encourage innovation and stimulate SMEs to offer up solutions to bigger firms has worked really well in a number of sectors. Examples cited include the Sellafield ‘Fit for Nuclear’ programme and the rail industry’s ‘Future Labs’ programme (involving TransPennine Express and Northern in our region.   Lots to take on board and process! Huge thanks to Andrew Finlayson of Accenture for hosting us and to the positive and constructive contributions from the group!