In the last three years, Fergus Trim has been instrumental in bringing over 2,000 jobs to the North East, after moving to the region from London to help fill one of the region's biggest business parks. Peter McCusker met him.
I GOT a telephone call in January 2008 saying a job had come up in Newcastle, explains Fergus Trim, development director at Quorum business park.
“It was the day after Allardyce had been sacked (former Newcastle United manager Sam Allardyce) and I thought ‘well, why not, I’m sure I could do a better job than him!”
“The call was from a headhunter but such a move just wasn’t on the agenda. I had a good job down south and a young family. But the more I thought about it, the more interesting the opportunity seemed.
“The £180m funding was in place to complete the project and it became more and more tempting, but the main challenge was persuading my wife and family.”
Trim’s wife Susan had a high-powered job in London doing celebrity PR work and dealing with characters as diverse as Richard Branson and Meatloaf.
The family were settled in Surrey with their three children, now aged nine, six and four, and were close to his wife’s family.
But Trim was excited by the opportunity. Everything was in place to bring forward the scheme and as the seed germinated and grew, the main challenge was to persuade his wife and family.
A few months later, over Easter 2008, on a visit to see his sisters in Scotland, they deliberately strayed off the A1 to check out the region and found the picturesque towns and villages of the Tyne Valley. After that Susan was far more “amenable to the idea of moving North”, explained Trim.
His brief was straightforward; Quorum Development Partners, a joint venture between London-based investors Tritax and York-based developers Grantside, had raised £180m to complete the Quorum Business Park in Newcastle.
Taking advantage of the tax breaks available from its position as an Enterprise Zone, it was a solid development proposition.
The money would facilitate the creation of 500,000 sq ft of office space with the potential to create almost 5,000 jobs.
This would be in addition to the 500,000sq ft of existing space from the first stage of the park, which is home to companies such as Aesica Pharmaceuticals, Revenue and Customs, the National Grid and IBM.
Quorum was relaunched in April 2009 and within a few months made a big splash with the announcement that Tesco Bank was coming to the park and creating 1,000 jobs there.
This was the start of an exceptional run which has seen more than 250,000sq ft of speculative office building and letting, creating over 2,000 new jobs.
Trim started off by preparing a compelling case for the region. He commissioned research and compiled an extensive and impressive range of statistics extolling the park’s virtues.
Over 15 years, a tenant in a 50,000sq ft building on Quorum, will pay over £40m less than for the same space in central London.
His research shows that 15% of the working population within 30 minutes’ of the park are actively looking for a job and average earnings in the region are 10% lower than the national average and that the workforce is better qualified than the national average.
Another selling point is that due to the tax breaks afforded by the park’s former enterprise zone status, Quorum can offer extended rent-free periods to its new tenants.
Trim’s open plan office on the ground floor of Q5 is about the size of half a football pitch. And waiting to see him, there is plenty of chance to play keepy-up with one of the footballs lying around next to the tennis rackets, the Connect 4 play equipment and mountain bikes.
Quorum places huge emphasis on integrating office workers into park life, offering free five-a-side, tennis and community barbecues.
While Trim may have one of the largest offices in the region, along with his own selection of toys, he still has to make his own coffee.
As we wait in the kitchen area for the kettle to boil, we take a look at the huge model of the park and he demonstrates how the development has progressed over the years.
Again he explains its progress in a calm and matter-of-fact way, exuding the quiet confidence of a man who knows where he, and the project, are going.
It has been a circuitous journey for Trim to get to this point. He was born in England but moved to Scotland at an early age. His mother, Lyndsey, is Scottish and father, Richard, English .
His father is an electrical engineer and was awarded an OBE for his contributions to the design of aircraft defence systems.
The family moved to Bishop Stortford when Trim was 12 and on leaving school he took a property course.
He had been interested in the built environment from an early age and secured a job training to be a chartered surveyor. Having achieved that in 1996, he headed off on travels in South America, Australia and New Zealand where he took in two cricket tests.
“I had always wanted to travel and fancied doing it after college, but the job market wasn’t very good back then so I got qualifications first.”
His Scottish heritage was a starting point for many conversations in Peru, a country that loves its football.
Invariably, former Scottish centre forward Joe Jordan would be mentioned – a reference to when Scotland lost 3-1 to Peru in the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.
“I felt at a loss,” he concedes. “I couldn’t name one Peruvian centre forward.”
Trim is a Fulham fan and travelled to Hamburg for last year’s Europa Cup Final when the team lost 2-1 to Athletico Madrid.
“I liked the rough and ready aspect of travelling. Being a middle-aged tourist is not the same thing. As I say in the questionnaire (see panel), I’ve always liked travel and my ideal job would be a travel writer.”
His return to England saw him being offered a job back at his former employers, London-based surveyors Wilks Head & Eve, where he carved out a niche as a football ground rating office.
He laughs as he recounts the diversionary tactics he used to prevent any negative impact on his clients.
“It was at the time stadia were becoming all-seaters and the rating authorities felt compelled to revalue them.
“I would act for football clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs, but we always managed to get to the end of the meeting without talking about the matters in hand, as we would spend our time just talking about football.”
It was during this time that Trim and one of his mates branched out into a different line of work with the opening of a cocktail bar in Battersea.
After spending some time in Brazil during his travels, he tried his hand at knocking out some Caipirinha cocktails every night after work.