Paul Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, TADEA

Mar 9 2010 by Jez Davison, Evening Gazette

A fear of rejection and failure has motivated Paul Jackson to reach the top of the tree. Jez Davison met him.

TELLING Paul Jackson not to do something is akin to waving a large, red flag at a snorting bull.

The self-made Middlesbrough entrepreneur acquired the same fighting qualities after being refused entry to university by his own parents.

Since then he has defied a serious injury and medical opinion to gain a law degree from Teesside and, more recently, take the top job at Billingham energy advice firm TADEA.

Paul recalls the bitter experience of losing out on further education just because his twin brother chose industry over academia.

“It was the first time in my life that I lost my temper. I felt as though I was being judged on someone else’s performance.”

The “defining moment” of his life, as he describes it, sparked a fear of failure that still haunts him today, but simultaneously drove him to push the boundaries of his physical and intellectual power.

A serious spinal injury in 1994 did not stop him from trading verbal blows with senior politicians or growing TADEA into a £4.5m not-for-profit enterprise with 50 staff - so two fingers to the surgeon who told him he’d never work again.

At TADEA, which he joined from Wilton-based Renew, he’s hoping to double turnover in two years by finding ways of greening up hard-to-treat homes managed by registered social landlords and using a £17m European funding injection to expand the North-east model across the Pennines.

He chastises the region for being too slow to grasp the green nettle, claiming that plans announced last year for a Teesside-based carbon capture and storage test-bed should have been on the table much earlier.

And the way to step up buy-in, he says, is to dangle hard brass rather than green carrots so that Britain can meet its stringent environmental targets. An 80% cut in emissions by 2050 looks a tough ask, with energy demand predicted to double during that period.

“My reason for being here is not to cut emissions; it’s to drive the economic benefit agenda. Cost and environmental considerations go hand in hand,” he says.

His comments betray an acute commercial awareness, which comes from running businesses from his early 20s.

In 1981 the former Middlesbrough High pupil launched a printing firm, Dolphin Press, after a five-year apprenticeship which led to him being named the region’s top apprentice in 1979.

He doubled turnover in year one and expanded further via two acquisitions before getting out for a five-figure sum.

After a stint at a Japanese-owned print equipment maker in the early 1990s, he worked in financial services at Barclays after being selected from 1,000 applicants.

A headlong fall down a staircase in 1994 led to a serious spinal injury but after a lengthy period of recuperation, his career took off again.

Through a contact in the retail trade he got involved in the £52m West Middlesbrough New Deal for Communities programme before becoming deputy chairman of West Middlesbrough Business Forum, growing its membership to more than 250.

Roles at the North East Chamber of Commerce and Federation of Small Businesses drew him into the political arena, which he relished, jousting with former Prime Minister Tony Blair on working groups tackling local regeneration and social policy.

Paul was instrumental in developing the national Neighbourhood Management Programme and Local Enterprise Growth Initiative before joining regeneration body Renew Tees Valley in 2003.

The green seeds planted by RTV under Paul’s stewardship have blossomed into a £4bn renewables industry that could yet create thousands of skilled jobs.

Renew’s merger into the Centre for Process Industries in 2008 signalled his departure to TADEA, first as interim CEO before taking on the permanent role.

While he applauds macro schemes such as the £300m bioethanol plant at Wilton, he says a network of micro projects can have just as big an influence by drastically cutting energy costs and generating income through sales of excess electricity and heat.

“We’ve been good at looking at nuclear, wind and carbon capture. What we’ve not done is look at smaller-scale projects such as solar heating and air source heat pumps.”

He lambasts high-street banks for making local decisions in London - and the Teesside that shaped him for accelerating a skills brain-drain of talent by not providing a top-class work-life alternative to other regions.

For someone whose get-up-and-go has defied parental and medical opinion, it’s not surprising that kind of inertia is far worse than “tried and failed”.