Serving the Teesside Business Community | 13
/NEWS
Business leaders raised £24,000 after sleeping rough on the
cobbled Victorian Street at Preston Park Museum.
TEES
BUSINESS
LEADERS
RAISE
£24,000
FROM
SLEEPOUT
B
usiness leaders from across Teesside
braved the cold to raise £24,000
and take a Middlesbrough-based
national charity’s fundraising fight against
homelessness and poverty past the £2m
mark.
Since the first CEO Sleepout event took
place at the Riverside Stadium in 2013, the
cause has gone national, with sleepouts
taking place at venues such as Wembley
Stadium, Lord’s cricket ground and 14 events
are scheduled next year in cities across
the UK including London, Manchester,
Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham.
And 63 hardy business leaders and
directors took part in the latest annual
Teesside edition of the event as they
swapped their suits and the comfort of their
own beds for winter woolies and a freezing
and rainy night spent in sleeping bags on the
Victorian Street at Preston Park Museum.
The money raised will be divided between
Teesside-based organisations and charities
including The Salvation Army Middlesbrough,
Middlesbrough Neighbourhood Welfare,
Middlesbrough and Stockton Foodbanks,
Is it time for flexible
working at all levels?
Home Start Teesside and The Moses Project
in Stockton, while the CEO Sleepout’s own
charity restaurant The Fork in The Road will
also benefit.
CEO Sleepout national coordinator Bianca
Robinson said: “The spirit and willingness
of business leaders to get involved never
ceases to amaze me, and it couldn’t be more
fitting to pass the fantastic milestone figure
of £2m in the place where it all began for us
on Teesside.”
Among those who took part were Mark
Kenrick and Mark Willis from px Group,
CourseBox CEO Mike Styan, Ramsdens
financial director Martin Clyburn, Marie
Kilgallon, director of Marie Kilgallon
Associates, and Build Directory MD Alisdair
Beveridge, who slept out for the second
successive year.
The event followed on from the first-ever
Darlington CEO Sleepout at Mowden Park
Rugby Club, which featured 30 bosses and
raised over £20,000.
For further details about the charity
and to register for its events, visit
ceosleepoutuk.com
Hero award for enigmatic businessman
A
n enigmatic Tees businessman and the
£300m-a-year cable company he built
from scratch have been recognised for
their charitable work.
Alastair Powell has shunned publicity while
building Middlesbrough-based Cleveland
Cable Company into a global success,
employing 600 staff, many of them on
Teesside.
And, through the company he and his
brother Michael have built into the UK’s
largest cable distributor, he has donated huge
amounts of money to charity – while always
insisting it all stays on Teesside.
Now Alastair has been recognised for his
achievements and generosity with a Teesside
Hero Award, with fellow businessman Andy
Preston describing him as “a massive local
success story”.
Headquartered on Middlesbrough’s
Riverside Park but with bases in Dublin and
Dubai as well as other areas of England,
Cleveland Cable Company employs around
300 staff on Teesside.
Chairman Alastair and chief executive
Michael saw the firm’s latest annual profits to
April 2017 surge by 144% to £28m on sales
of £251m.
Despite his success, Alastair famously
does not usually conduct interviews, nor
seek publicity.
/OPINION
Cleveland Cable chairman Alastair Powell
(centre) receives his award from Teesside
Philanthropic Foundation chairman Andy
Preston and co-founder Tanya Garland, of
patrons Cool Blue Brand Communications.
In a rare interview, he said: “I don’t often
stop to think about it but when I take a
moment to step back from it all, it still
surprises and staggers me how big the
company has become.
“The company has grown from just a
handful of people when Michael and I started
out to a business with a £300m-a-year
turnover, employing 600 staff.
“I’m proud to have our head office here on
Teesside, meaning the bulk of our wealth and
the company’s financial success comes back
to the town and area.
“But I’m one person out of 600 – we’ve
got such a fantastic team of people, many
who’ve worked for Cleveland Cable Company
for 30 years or more.”
A
s I walk around Middlesbrough
College, I see and hear no discernible
difference in the ambitions of boys
compared to the ambitions of girls.
But there is no escaping that in the
workplace there remains a gender pay gap.
Gender pay equality is often
misunderstood. This measures the average
hourly rate for men in an organisation
versus the average hourly rate of women.
New findings reveal that in three out of
four organisations across the UK, women
have an average hourly rate which is lower -
and often significantly lower - than men.
A key factor in this is the fact that women
choose to spend more time with their
families and therefore seek out part-time,
flexible employment options, which are
often more readily available in lower paid
occupations.
I believe that if women are making
choices about their careers when they start
a family and choose to seek out part-time
or flexible work, and can only find these
opportunities lower in an organisation, then
they are less likely to reach the senior roles
of an organisation over the whole of their
careers.
So a question I would pose is could or
should we, as employers, seek to offer
more flexible working at all levels of our
organisations?
This would allow us to bring talent
through to all levels of our businesses
and provide more options to men in the
workplace – who now often wish to
take a more active role in sharing caring
responsibilities?
I believe that our economy, our
businesses and our communities would
flourish if we could achieve this.
Zoe Lewis
Chief executive & principal
Middlesbrough College
See our special 22-page supplement
on the inaugural Tees Businesswomen
Awards from page 37.
Able UK has won a major contract for its Able
Seaton Port facility on the River Tees. The
project will involve the dismantling, recycling
and disposal of offshore natural gas platforms
from the ExxonMobil Canada (ExxonMobil)-
operated Sable Offshore Energy Project off
the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.
#TalkingUpTeesside