Download MAKING THE DIFFERENCE

“MAKING THE DIFFERENCE”
NWBLT ANNUAL REPORT 2008
The North West Business Leadership Team (NWBLT), which brings together senior executives of leading
businesses in North West England, once again played a leading role in harnessing the influence of the regional
business community for the benefit of the whole region in 2008. Against a deteriorating global economic
climate, we continued to contribute significantly to the region’s long-term strategic development whilst also
engaging in some major initiatives and projects of key importance to the region during the year.
2008 was Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture and proved a landmark year for both the City of
Liverpool and the wider region. NWBLT’s principal contribution was as the lead sponsor of the Liverpool
Summit, a highly-acclaimed two-day event which attracted an international audience of over 800 senior
business delegates to the BT Convention Centre in Liverpool in October. Working with leading conference
managers, Benchmark for Business, and our co-sponsors Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA),
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Culture Company and the Financial Times, we were privileged to
welcome world-class business school professors such as Michael Porter, Clayton Christensen and Renee
Mauborgne alongside experienced business and political figures like Sir Terry Leahy and Lord Chris Patten.
An hour-long Q & A session, chaired by Professor Michael Brown of Liverpool John Moores University, in
which former UK Secretary-General Kofi Annan answered a wide range of the audience’s questions on world
affairs, provided the climax to a historic two-day event for the region. Stuart Chambers, NWBLT’s Chairman
for the past three years, chaired the Summit and also hosted a magnificent celebration dinner at Liverpool’s
beautiful Town Hall on the final evening.
The global economic climate provided a challenging backcloth for the business community, particularly during
the latter part of the year. NWBLT’s response has been to maintain its dedication towards the long-term
strategic and sustainable development of the region, whilst providing both a global and a cross-sectoral
perspective on the particular challenges facing the North West. First among our ongoing challenges remains the
pressing need for collective business leadership and commitment in addressing climate change. Following the
considerable impact made in 2007 by Gudrun Cartwright’s study of NWBLT’s response to climate change, we
are now participating in a joint climate change campaign with Business in the Community and CBI North West,
supported by NWDA, which Gudrun is managing. This is a two year project to deliver collective business
action aimed at mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change and it will feed in to the Prince of
Wales’ May Day Network, thus providing an opportunity to demonstrate collective business leadership on what
is undoubtedly the greatest environmental challenge of our time.
During 2008, NWBLT adopted a new mission statement to “make the North West the UK’s most attractive
region in which to live and work for generations to come’. This mission statement demonstrates our long-term
commitment to the economic, environmental and social well-being of the North West region. Meanwhile we
re-affirmed our particular commitment to improving the region’s performance in four main areas: Skills for
Business; National and International Links; Innovation and Sustainable Development; and Promoting the
Region’s Advantages. Our members are generous in giving time, and the benefits of their considerable
experience, to the region and their collective thinking within the NWBLT priority groups which focus on these
four priority themes is helping to identify some of the key actions which will make the greatest difference to the
region’s overall capability in each of these areas.
In relation to Skills for Business, we have renewed our commitment to promoting the development of business
skills through partnership between our member companies and the region’s schools, colleges and communities.
Working closely with Business in the Community’s national Talent Plan programme, we are aiming to focus
our members’ considerable impact over this broad agenda into those areas where it will have the greatest
benefit. A number of our member companies have stepped up their engagement with schools this year and we
look forward to making further progress in relation to business engagement in this crucial area during 2009.
Our region is well served in terms of air, rail, sea and electronic links and NWBLT continues to lobby hard,
both for further enhancements to our transport networks and for greater recognition of the advantages which
they can bring to the region. We also continue to support the case for long-term investment in a high speed rail
link between the North West and London and to support the improvement of East-West links for the region and
the major improvement in rail connections across the North of England which will be provided by the
Manchester Hub project. NWBLT also debated, in some detail, Greater Manchester’s Transport Innovation
Fund (‘TIF’) proposal and, whilst naturally accepting the outcome of the popular vote on this issue, we will
continue to press for measures to alleviate the very considerable economic and environmental cost of road
congestion in and around Manchester.
NWBLT’s priority group for Innovation and Sustainable Development seeks to address the twin challenges of
innovation and sustainability as part of one single agenda aimed at maximising our creative potential, in
collaboration with national and international partners, in these key areas of scientific research. We are
particularly keen to support further collaboration with our region’s exceptionally strong higher education sector.
We continue to offer experienced sounding-boards or critique panels to help assess major regional investment
projects and are working closely with the rapidly-developing Daresbury Innovation Centre, and the national
Science and Innovation Campus, to help promote our region’s overall innovative capability.
One of the key roles which NWBLT members have performed, over many years, is that of national and
international ambassadors for the North West. This year, in addition to making the most of the opportunities
created by the Liverpool Summit, NWBLT continued to focus on the potential for promoting the region’s
cultural strengths through our annual Lever Prize. Following the success of earlier collaborations with the 2006
and 2007 winners, Liverpool Biennial and Manchester International Festival, we awarded the 2008 Lever to
Tate Liverpool and were able to share in many outstanding events and exhibitions at the Tate throughout the
year, most notably the Gustav Klimt Exhibition which brought large numbers of discerning visitors to Liverpool
from around the UK and abroad. We look forward to further opportunities to work with, and promote, other
examples of excellence throughout the North West.
In addition to the above activities, NWBLT continued to support the implementation of a number of key
NWDA projects, particularly those designed to support SME’s and improve the region’s overall productivity.
Senior representatives of our member companies played key roles in mentoring SME managers under the
region’s Knowledge to Innovate (K2i) programme, which helps to embed innovative practices so as to stimulate
companies’ future growth. We are also closely involved with NWDA’s leadership and management activities
which we see as essential to the task of maximising the potential of the region’s overall workforce. Meanwhile
we are very actively engaged in contributing to the 20-year Regional Strategy, which is now expected to
become operational as a statutory document in the Spring of 2010, bringing together economic, spatial, housing,
transport and environmental policies in one integrated Regional Strategy. Our Team and Forum members have
already made key contributions to this process, in relation to key issues and principles for the Regional Strategy.
As mentioned earlier, Stuart Chambers, who is the world-wide Chief Executive Officer of NSG Group
(Pilkington), has been our Chairman for the past three years. Stuart completed his term as Chairman of
NWBLT at the end of 2008. This has been a defining period in the development of NWBLT and our ability to
bring a distinctive, far-sighted and well-balanced perspective to many of the region’s key debates is now
increasingly well recognised. Stuart remains a member of the Team but hands over the chair to Paul Lee, the
Senior Partner of the international law firm Addleshaw Goddard. Our two Deputy Chairmen for 2009 are
Geoff Muirhead, Group Chief Executive of Manchester Airport Group, and Trevor Gregory, UK Managing
Director of ABB, the automation and power technologies group. NWBLT looks forward to playing its full part
in contributing to the North West’s well-being against what we hope will be an improved economic outlook
during 2009.
Geoffrey Piper, Chief Executive, NWBLT
January 2009