Phil Peak's blog

Phil Peak, Deputy Chief Executive of Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub, celebrates his tenth anniversary with the organisation in April. In this blog, he looks back on his career and his time at the Growth Hub, as well as looking to the future.

The time has flown by and I can’t believe it has been ten years since Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub began and I was among those seconded to join the team.

But what a decade it has been! We have achieved such a great deal with our one-stop approach to helping businesses throughout the area, and I am proud of how much we’ve done, but there is still-much more to achieve.

To start at the beginning of my career, when I joined the Growth Hub I had 30 years’ experience under my belt in IT and sales, and marketing sectors, working with OEMs including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, and British Shipbuilders, before I took over my father’s printing business in 2000 after he retired.

Twelve years later, I decided to sell it to a publishing company and through the business I became aware of an opportunity at the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, for maternity leave cover.

I went for the interview and the panel mentioned the launch of the Clearing House – as the Growth Hub was called in its early days – and, along with representatives from the University of Warwick, Coventry University, Coventry City Council, and Warwickshire County Council, we were seconded to work there as part of the initial team.

It was chaotic fun in the early days! I was given responsibility for the Stratford district and slowly began to grow a network and links with Stratford-on-Avon District Council.

I attended as many networking events as I could and went business-to-business around the local industrial estates, to knock on doors and explain more about the business support services that we could offer.

I was proud of what we achieved in those first two or three years because we went from zero to being the front door for business support in Coventry and Warwickshire.

We found businesses of all shapes and sizes that nobody knew about because they had not previously accessed business support and we worked to build relationships and bring them on board.

Much has changed over the last decade. At the start, there were just five account managers and then Craig Humphrey came onboard with a real vision, and we built the team gradually by introducing business navigators to look after micro and small businesses as well as more account managers to focus on high-growth businesses.

That has proved to be a tremendously successful model and we have evolved on several levels.

We deal with individual businesses, cohorts and supply chains to identify opportunities for businesses, and we deliver projects for Government. The first was the original Brexit awareness project in 2019, then a project through Covid and now Made Smarter West Midlands and the Coventry Investment Readiness Programme.

The structure we have set-up within the commercial business, C&W Business Solutions, has enabled us to run these programmes.

We are proud of what we have achieved because we have ended up with a group of companies – CW Growth Hub, C&W Business Solutions and C&W Champions – which was particularly important when the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership closed last March, which was a tense period since we were uncertain about our future.

We now have new shareholders which is testament to all the work that we have done over the last ten years, becoming embedded into Coventry and Warwickshire’s business community.

I’m not ready to retire yet and we have done a great deal – we have reached over 10,000 businesses in Coventry and Warwickshire and supported tens of thousands more through our work as Cluster lead for the West Midlands Growth Hubs, but there are still many more businesses to reach, as well as taking businesses that we have already helped to the next stage of their growth.

The public purse is being changed and for the next few years we have a model that is sustainable.  

I have always enjoyed helping younger colleagues to develop their potential and skills, and the Growth Hub has been a big support on their career journey.

When I sold the family business in 2012, I wondered what I was going to do next in my mid-50s but the Growth Hub has given me another wonderful chapter which has brought together all the different elements of my working life. I love the people I work with and I have fun – you can’t ask for more than that.