Our Story Project 1 OUR STORY 2 The Peel Group Our Story Project 3 4 The Peel Group Our Story The Peel Group 1 OUR STORY 2 The Peel Group Our Story Contents 3 4 JOHN WHITTAKER Foreword 8 14 18 26 HOPE POLLARD GRAEME BRIDGE JOE ROBERTS TAMMY SILCOCK BEN GREENAWAY Bridgewater Canal JERRY LYNCH EventCity Wirral Waters LEE CUNNINGHAM MEGAN PICKERING Peel Ports – CONTENTS – 30 36 40 44 IAN PATRICK PAUL MADDISON THE CUMMINS’ CHRIS FARMAKIS Land Doncaster Sheffield Airport Homes STEPHEN FARMAKIS Liverpool John Lennon Airport 50 58 64 70 MIKE FLANNERY ARCHIE GRAHAM OBE SAMANTHA HAWKINS PROFESSOR AVRIL YAQUV BOB JAMES BRENDA DEANE ALAN REED intu Trafford Centre Glasgow Harbour MediaCityUK Chatham Waters 76 80 84 88 STEVE JONES JOHN MAHER DARREN LUSTED SOPHIE MAHON Falmouth Port Liverpool Waters Gloucester Quays Communities 4 The Peel Group Our Story John Whittaker 5 JOHN WHITTAKER Chairman and Founder of The Peel Group “ Every morning, as a boy growing up in my home, ‘Tor Hey’ in Greenmount, Lancashire, I would gaze out of my bedroom window and look up at the tower on Holcombe Hill. It’s more than just a tower to me; it’s a tower of strength, which, throughout rain, hail and storms, remains resilient, immovable and resolute. ” 6 The Peel Group Our Story John Whittaker 7 have one central theme; it’s about the multitude of opportunities we The Peel story will never end. We extracting value from God’s given have delivered, creating economic still have a lot to achieve and our “...PEEL DOES assets of land, air and water. activity, thousands of jobs and a better legacy will remain for the benefit standard of living. This has been of generations to come. Of course, this needs foresight, a achieved by recycling and reinvesting NOT JUST vision and willingness to take risks, our profits back into our businesses There are so many wonderful stories but to make this vision a reality and that principle still applies today. that it’s not possible to capture them you have to create a loyal and all but I hope you will agree with me TRANSFORM enthusiastic team and take those We are here to write the next that the small selection of individual people on a journey with you. During chapters of the books that the reflections in this book demonstrate my rugby days, I learnt that a team’s great entrepreneurs of the Industrial the impact our businesses have had LANDSCAPES, camaraderie, spirit and passion are Revolution gave us, whether it’s on people’s daily lives across the what helps it to succeed. The same through the landholdings along the UK – their hopes, their dreams, their applies to business – a good team Duke of Bridgewater’s canal system, ambitions and their aspirations. will beat a line-up of prima donnas. Daniel Adamson’s Manchester Ship IT CHANGES What they show is that Peel does Canal or Jesse Hartley, engineer of the Our company motto – determination, Port of Liverpool and Dock Estate. not just transform landscapes, it perseverance and patience with a dose changes lives too, and for that, LIVES TOO...” we should all feel a great sense of humility – evolved from this attitude We will take the legacy of what they and it’s a mantra that I continue to instil built and use it to link the illustrious of achievement and pride. in my family and the Peel team today. cities of Liverpool and Manchester through our pioneering Ocean Please enjoy. I went to boarding school at the age it was these early, formative years, Mill in Ramsbottom – just for its As we look at what Peel has created Gateway investment programme – John Whittaker of seven, and in the early days, apart that defined me. A combination of chimney. It was a fortuitous moment. and achieved, I am immensely proud which is only part of our significant from my family, it was the tower I my mother’s loving devotion and I quickly learnt that if you sold the of the workforce that has made it proposals and contribution to missed and longed to see. In my first inspirational character, along with the scrap from the mill you could make happen over the past 55 years, and the Northern Powerhouse. letter home, I wrote: “Dear Mum and influence of my father and boarding more than the amount you paid for the Dad, as I look out of the window, the school’s intense discipline inspired building and still have it left to develop. sun is shining, but not for me and me to prove something, to achieve, I can’t see the tower on the hill.” regardless of the obstacles that Acquiring redundant cotton mills soon would inevitably head my way. became very competitive, which is when I began to look at acquiring Above all, I had confidence operating mills, and Peel Mills in PEEL and believed in myself. I wasn’t Bury was the first acquisition. It was TOWER afraid of taking risks, of which losing money, so to overcome this, – there have been many and we it meant acquiring more operating Holcombe are not without them today. textile mills and rationalising and Hill combining the businesses. At the After leaving boarding school at same time, we redeveloped the empty the age of 17, I was articled to a premises and the land they stood on, firm of auctioneers and valuers in thus ensuring a profitable business Bolton. It was here that I learnt the and the creation of new jobs. value of artefacts, land and property, It was my strength and security – as well as the need for deals and It was from one of these mills that whatever the problem, it was always negotiation, which set me on a path. the next phase in Peel’s evolution there. Little did I know that, 22 years emerged, when the first retail shed later, I would acquire Peel Mills Ltd, Certain events and crossroads was built on Bobby Hall’s factory the successor to Sir Robert Peel’s happen in life, one of which took on Angouleme Way, Bury. That led family business before he went into me from estate agency to quarrying to Peel becoming the largest retail politics, and I would convert that – still in Peel’s portfolio today – park developer in the country. childhood emotion and sentiment into followed by waste disposal. developing The Peel Group of today. It is a simple model that we went A significant turning point came while on to replicate across all elements I’ve always felt strongly about the I was considering how to burn and of our businesses – whether it be notion of destiny in life. It’s an inner dispose of waste, which led me to textiles, land and property, ports, spirit that drives me to achieve, and acquire the redundant Square Works airports, retail, energy, or media – all 8 The Peel Group Our Story Hope Pollard 9 Wirral Waters Wirral Waters is the largest regeneration project in the UK and also seeks to become the most sustainable. It is anticipated that over 20,000 permanent new jobs will be created during the lifetime of the scheme, along with stunning waterfront living and landscaped open spaces for its community to enjoy. The 500- acre former Birkenhead dockland is undergoing a renaissance on an unprecedented scale. HOPE wirralwaters.co.uk POLLARD ELECTRICAL INSTALLATION APPRENTICE A L · R W R I A T W E R · S Hope Pollard from Tranmere is employed by North West Construction and is studying an electrical installation apprenticeship at Wirral Metropolitan College. 10 The Peel Group Our Story Hope Pollard 11 “ IT’S ENABLED “I really want to ME TO DO become an accomplished MORE WITH electrician...” MY LIFE “ Hope is one of 13,500 students “Being on this course has benefited at Wirral Metropolitan College, a me in many ways. It has given me new multi-million pound campus full-time employment and enabled dedicated to training in construction me to do more with my life. I really and the built environment, and the want to become an accomplished first of many building projects to electrician and I hope to continue my be completed at Wirral Waters. education to HNC level at university.” 12 The Peel Group Our Story Ben Greenaway 13 A L · R W R I A T W E R · S BEN GREENAWAY GREEN STREET CO-ORDINATOR “Planting a tree is a demonstration of faith in the future as well as a gift to those who follow us.” Ben Greenaway is the co-ordinator for “As well as making a more pleasant and Bidston Moss to the docklands the Green Street project, responsible business environment, we are development area has already brought for creating attractive boulevards confident that our tree planting communities together to enjoy and and spaces in and around Peel’s programme will contribute to increased celebrate their improved surroundings. regeneration project on the Wirral. investment in the area and ultimately People respond well to trees and more jobs. As the physical landscape it gives me great pride to see this “The 1,000 trees planted by The improves, people will be encouraged project quite literally come alive.” Mersey Forest in Birkenhead since to walk and cycle more. Indeed, 2012 make a bold statement about our work in residential areas linking hopes for the future of the town – Birkenhead Park, Ilchester Park a town on the cusp of change. 14 The Peel Group Our Story Graeme Bridge 15 Bridgewater Canal Constructed over 250 years ago by the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, the 39-mile Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh and is considered to be England’s first true canal.