Crain's Manchester Business - 10-14 May, 2010 - (Page 4)

4 NEWS Crain’s Manchester Business / May 10, 2010 Family of Peterloo villain puts estate on the market Private residence or leisure development tipped for historic site with £8.5m price tag BY SIMON BINNS A 1,000 acre rural estate near Bolton has been put up for sale for the first time in nearly 850 years. The Hulton Park Estate, between Bolton and Leigh, is on the market for £8.5m and selling agents at York-based Smiths Gore say it is the first time the estate has been open to offers since at least 1167. The land is being offered for sale as a whole or in up to four lots. It contains some commercial and residential property as well of a handful of working farms. The former Hulton Hall stately home has been demolished but agents claim the site presents an opportunity for “a significant private residence or leisure development”. The 713 acres of agricultural land and properties, which are let on various tenancies, generate an annual rent of £150,000. The estate is still owned by a member of the Hulton family, which has historic links to the Peterloo Massacre. William Hulton, who was born in 1787 and inherited the estate when he was 18, became High Sheriff of Lancashire and chairman of the Lancashire and Cheshire Magistrates. On July 16, 1819, Hulton and nine other magistrates met in Manchester to discuss what they should do about the planned meeting at St Peter’s Field that day. Hulton had already arranged for a military force to be in Manchester to deal with the large number of people expected to arrive to hear radical orator Henry Hunt speak on parliamentary reform. After hours of riots, Hulton instructed the arrest of Hunt and the other leaders of the demonstration. While the military attempted to The Hulton Park estate near Bolton, which selling agents say is open to offers for the first time since the 12th century Canal crossing or gridlock, leaders warn BY JAMES CHAPELARD Business leaders in Warrington fear that traffic gridlock will be a regular occurrence unless the town gets a new Manchester Ship Canal crossing. They say it is needed before there is a sharp increase in traffic on the waterway from two major new port developments backed by Peel Group. More vessels will be making the journey through the town when Peel opens Port Salford in Barton, a £400m development which got the planning green light in March. A further increase in traffic is expected when the recently approved Port Warrington development at Moore, also planned by Peel Ports, comes to fruition. Any increase in activity along the canal means that three swing bridges on roads south of Warrington town centre will open more frequently, holding up traffic coming in and out of the borough. The A5060 Chester Road from Daresbury, the Knutsford Road from Knutsford and the busy A49, which links to Stockton Heath, all cross the canal and are regularly blocked. As recently as April 13, Warrington was gripped by gridlock when the Knutsford Road swing bridge became stuck at 7.30am after letting through a large vessel on its way to Manchester. ‘I don’t think the pricing is optimistic. If you’re being bold, you would say that the asking price is the minimum value’ GILES WORDSWORTH, SMITHS GORE make arrests, 11 people were killed and more than 400 were injured. Hulton insisted that only two people had been killed in St Peter’s Field and that one was a special constable, but his reputation was permanently damaged by the affair. He was later involved in the planning and construction of the Bolton & Leigh Railway. Giles Wordsworth, of Smiths Gore, said the site offered a number of options to buyers and was “reasonably priced” at £8.5m. “There is a huge spectrum of possibilities on a site like this, given the number of chimney pots that are around it,” he said. “It may appeal to smaller regional developers for some of the plots. Large investors may also take a long term view on it, even though it doesn’t really produce much income in its current state; alternatively, a high net worth individual might look at the opportunity to rebuild a large house on the site of the original hall’s foundations. “It’s early days but we’ve had a bit of interest and we’ll be having open days for the next two Tuesdays. I don’t think the pricing is optimistic. If you’re being bold, you would say that the asking price is the minimum value.” Peter Vinden, managing director of construction consultancy The Vinden Partnership, which is based in Bolton, said the site may not be at the top of the list of priorities in the town’s regenration, although it had potential. “The future use of the site will have to be led by the Unitary Development Plan (UDP), which sets out how land within the borough should be used in the coming years,” he said. “In the past there has been a number of proposals for the redevelopment of parts of the site, predominantly for residential use. I would expect to see a slightly more aggressive push on planning applications made at the site; developers will be quick to spot the opportunity to be had, but will ultimately be guided by the UDP .” COMMENTS? sbinns@crain.com ‘We’re in a bit of a quandary because Warrington is unique in having three bridges in such a close run’ WARREN MARSHALL, PEEL GROUP UKFast owner turns down £53m and eyes IT security market BY MICHAEL FAHY The founder of Manchester-based web hosting firm UKFast says he has turned down a £53m offer for the business. Lawrence Jones told Crain’s that he rejected the deal because he didn’t think the buyer would have been good for the company’s long term prospects. He declined to say who made the offer, which valued the firm at more than 25 times profits, but said it was not operating in the same space as UKFast. “I don’t think they’d have understood our clients,” he said. “It would have been a bad deal for the clients and bad for the team.” Jones said he believes the business has significantly greater growth prospects and likened it to a recoiled elastic band which was on the verge of propelling forwards. “I want to pull it back and see where it lands,” he added. “Besides, I would be bored stupid if I’d sold. “Everyone I know who sells up seems to regret it. I’d sooner pay tax and continue to work.” Jones said he is planning a diversification strategy which will see the company move into other areas such as disaster recovery, offsite backup and into the IT security market that is currently led by Manchester-based competitor NCC Group. UKFast plans to offer services such as ethical hacking and PCI accreditation of transactional websites. The company has yet to file audited accounts for the year to December 31, 2010, but Jones said that it managed to increase pre-tax profits by 50 per cent to £1.8m while sales increased by 56 per cent to £10m. “Things have been pretty good,” he said. “We’re about a year behind where we were with our plan because of the recession, but I’m about to take on an extra 60 sales people. The momentum is still growth.” ian, TV station UKTV and for Virgin’s Limited Edition, whose boss Sir Richard Branson recently became a running partner when Jones was holidaying on his privately-owned Necker Island earlier this year. “I spent most of my time listening,” said Jones. “You only have to have one good question and you’ll get an amazing answer. He gave me advice on how to take a bit of a step back and still drive the business forwards. In business terms, he’s many people’s idol — he’s certainly mine.” Carl Houghton, a Manchesterbased partner at Clearwater Corporate Finance, said that the offer received seemed like a good one. “We’re real evangelists for this sector and there is lots of growth to come,” said Houghton. “Anything leaning towards hosting, virtualisation and cloud computing is a very good place to be and you could expect to achieve a double-digit multiple on a sale, but unless there are compelling reasons it’s unlikely that anyone will offer 25 times profits — or anything close to it.” COMMENTS? mfahy@crain.com ‘It would have been a bad deal for the clients and bad for the team’ LAWRENCE JONES, UKFAST Branson He said there had been downward pressure on margins in IT hosting, particularly with many firms at the lower end of the market offering services with little value-added and minimal helpdesk support when things go wrong. He said that his firm had become one of the more expensive providers, but added that it did not necessarily want to make its product cheaper. “It’s a costly product to deliver — we’ve got 106 staff in here and around a quarter are responsible for out-of-hours delivery,” he said. “We’ve also just spent £1.5m upgrading routers and firewalls.” The firm currently hosts websites for a couple of the UK’s major clearing banks, credit expert Exper- A disgruntled Warrington businessman, who did not wish to be named, told Crain’s: “Would somebody like to take up the case with Steve Broomhead of NWDA and Mr Whitaker of Peel Holdings for their views on proposed increases in canal traffic? Unless alternative canal and river crossings are developed first, then Warrington is dead.” Adele Carr, managing director of Adele Carr Financial Recruitment, whose head office is on Wilderspool Causeway, also urged Peel to look at replacing the bridges. She added: “We have had a number of occasions where our staff have been late for work or meetings due to the bridge being off. It seems to be getting worse rather than better.” Colin Daniels, chief executive of Warrington Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber supported the development of the ship canal but was worried about the hold-ups and concerned that replacing the bridges may be too costly. He said: “If it was possible to not have ships at peak times that would be a major step forward. I am sure the Peel would look at that. But even with that there will be some problems with traffic.” Daniels said ships for Port Warrington would not add a great deal of canal traffic because goods would be unloaded to rail before they went through the town. Warren Marshall, from Peel, told Warrington Borough Council’s development control committee in November it was working on the issue. He said: “At the moment everything is decided by the tides. If high tide comes at 9pm, it will probably hit Warrington at 5pm which is obviously not good for the traffic. We are in a bit of a quandary because Warrington is unique in having three bridges in such a close run.” COMMENTS?jchapelard@crain.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crain's Manchester Business - 10-14 May, 2010

Crain's Manchester Business - 10-14 May, 2010