PEER Support: Rossendale

Everywhere in Rossendale there are passionate people with ideas for businesses or projects that can improve their lives and the lives of the people around them. We have to listen very carefully to hear them, because they don’t shout about their ideas. They only talk about their ideas to people they trust – usually to family and friends.

PEER Support has built and maintains a listening network across Rossendale, so that these ideas can be heard and helped become reality.

Everywhere in Rossendale there are passionate people who want to help others in their community to succeed. They might run a business, they might work in a school or for the Council, or they might be involved in community projects. They come from every walk of life, every creed, all ages, man, woman and child. Their passion for where they live or work is obvious. They may have never had the opportunity to work together.

PEER Support helps local people work together for the benefit of Rossendale.

PEER Support has a group of trained volunteer mentors who provide free, confidential business management and networking support and guidance to local people with an idea for starting or expanding a business or project. Local leadership is essential to PEER Support’s success. Without local ownership, understanding and management, nothing will happen.

PEER Support increases the enterprise potential of Rossendale by providing easy local access to confidential, high quality, open-ended, free of charge help for anyone in Rossendale that has an idea for a business or a project. 

Contact PEER Support

PEER Support

Rossendale has never really enjoyed the funding bonanza that many of our neighbouring districts experienced. Instead we have had to get used to doing a lot more with a lot less and generally recognising that it’s largely up to us to help ourselves. PEER Support’s place in all this is to support, and often bring together, people who want to do something to make Rossendale a better place. We have found this makes a massive difference. People don’t feel like they are trying to do something alone, but rather have all the contacts and knowledge that they need to make something happen. Projects like PEER Support are the missing link needed to release the enterprising potential of a community.

How Does PEER Support Work?

PEER Support is essentially a big network of people from across Rossendale, volunteers from all walks of life, who are ready and available to help enterprising people and ideas. Within that network is a huge amount of creativity, skills, experience, local knowledge and connections. Added to this is the experience and skill of our trained volunteer mentors who can work directly with individuals and groups to help make things happen. We have found that this is a potent combination and the results speak for themselves.

PEER Support Impact

The impact of PEER Support has grown year by year and more than 600 businesses have been helped since we started life in 2003. Of those around 70 per cent were new businesses, the remaining 30 per cent are existing businesses who were seeking to grow.

Our definition of start-up business help is where we can show that PEER has provided substantive support. In other words, we only count those businesses which would not have started without our help. Likewise expansions are only counted where a business has undergone a step change with help from PEER Support.

Sometimes, because PEER Support is long term, this can be more than one step change. The figures also throw up some interesting facts. For example, well over 50% of our clients come from Rossendale’s most deprived wards. Our community approach means that we have enjoyed notable success with what are often termed ‘hard to reach’ groups. The figures also show that 47 per cent of our clients are women.

Of course, helping business is our aim but PEER Support has also been effective at bringing different individuals and communities together through our enterprise board. More than 100 business people and community activists have been board members and remain part of our extended network supporting enterprise in Rossendale.

Another area where we’ve enjoyed success has been in connecting business support in the area. Representatives of Business Link, Pennine Lancashire Enterprise Trust and Rossendale Borough Council are all PEER Support members and our meetings will often be the forum for joined up action.

PEER Support has proved particularly effective in supporting Social Enterprises — they make up some 17 per cent of our clients. It’s no surprise therefore to find that in surveys carried out by Lancashire County Council Rossendale has by far the highest concentration of social enterprises per capita in the county.

Contact PEER Support

Client Request: Bacup Borough Football Club

                

Business Development Executive for Ambitious Football Club

Bacup Borough FC, formed in 1875, currently reside in the North West Counties League. We have recently won the League’s Challenge Cup.  We now want to build this success on the pitch by developing new commercial opportunities.

To achieve this ambition, we are seeking a self-employed, commission only Business Development Executive.

Reporting directly to the owner of the club, you will manage, develop and enhance current revenue streams and seek additional sales opportunities. This is an exciting and demanding role and will be very rewarding for the right individual, offering them the opportunity to join a successful team and to progress and develop their talent.

Our Business Development Executive will:

• Define and implement a structured sales and marketing strategy for sponsorship, hospitality, advertising and retail
• Identify and capture key leads for senior partnerships, promoting Bacup Borough FC, our stadium and our Sports Bar
• On a match day you will be responsible for the running of the match day operation, liaising with clients and staff to ensure the highest standards of customer service.
• Manage key accounts to ensure relationships can be established and enhanced

This is an important role and will suit a self starter, someone who welcomes a challenge and keen to work as a key member of our team. You will have honed business development, sponsorship and/or corporate sales experience, most likely from within the football community. You will demonstrate a flexible attitude to work with the ability to travel and attend match days. If you have the industry knowledge as well as the drive to work with best but also the ability to work in a demanding and pressurised environment then please get contact us!

We are offering an attractive commission only package for the right candidate.

Please send a CV in the first instance to bacup-bfc@tiscali.co.uk

PEER Support Volunteer Profile: Lynda Hannam

Born and bred in Salford I went on to study business at Bury College followed by a Post Grad in Business Management at Salford University and finally completing a Masters in Business Information Systems at Bolton University.

After studying on a part-time basis I qualified as a teacher although after a couple of years my life took a turn and I was steered into business and the private sector.

For many years I was involved in combustion engineering finally becoming General Manager before starting my own combustion engineering  business in 1994.  As the company grew, and after joining forces with a business partner,  I became more involved in the international and commercial side of the business.

I am a past president of the Bury Chamber of Commerce and an ex-director of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce during which time I was invited on two civic delegations to China to represent the Bury business community.

In more recent years I retrained as a teacher and now teach GCSE and A Level Business Studies, and A Level Government and Politics at a local high school.  I am also a member of the Rural Rossendale Group, a local community group made up of accommodation providers all with the aim of promoting Rossendale and raising its profile.

Since moving to the area over ten years ago, my husband and I started, and still run, a hospitality business here in the Rossendale Valley.

PEER Support Volunteer Profile: Greg King

Born in 1946 in Bedfordshire. Moved North with my parents and eventually 7 siblings in 1960 to the Chester area. Educated at Chester Grammar School and later qualified as a Quantity Surveyor at Liverpool Polytechnic, now John Moores University. My part time jobs before qualification included the assembly line at Vauxhalls, a bus conductor and a council labourer.

Worked as a QS in the construction industry till 1981, then set up Kings Paints at Cloughfold, Rawtenstall with my wife in 1982 and our business is still going strongly.

Married in 1972 to Linda, and we have 3 children and 7 grandchildren with another on the way.

Lived in Britannia, Bacup since 1978. Spare time hobbies included playing rugby union till I was 58 and playing badminton. Holidays are usually spent disappearing in our campervan anywhere in Europe.

Have been treasurer of Rossendale Sports Club since it was built in 1989. I was a board member of both SRB projects in Haslingden and Bacup with Stacksteads. I was a founder member of PEER, formed near the end of the Bacup SRB project to continue helping enterprises in Rossendale.

I recently retired from day to day running of Kings Paints and currently help with the community events held at Bacup Hub, now under private ownership.

My son Daniel runs his own accountancy practice at Kings Paints and helps run our business with part time assistance from my 2 daughters and 4 other employees.

PEER Support Volunteer Profile: Dorothy Mitchell

I was a nurse by profession, forced by adversity into business and now a pensioner with a very low boredom threshold.  I retired as Managing Director of Musbury Fabrics and still a chronic workaholic, work full time for my charitable interests.  Founder Chair of Rossendale Hospice, Rossendale Area Board of Young Enterprise and co-founder with Barry Payton of Haslingden Community Link and Children’s Centre as a pre-cursor to our vision of Rossendale as a Centre of Healthy Living. The advent of PEER Support and Enterprise Facilitation™ brought the goal nearer and defined the missing link. I became a founder member but also our first client.  The urgent necessity for social enterprise to sustain community and charitable projects was becoming more pressing. We needed something that would assimilate the acumen, skill, experience and altruism of local business to develop sustainable enterprise geared to health and economic regeneration in Rossendale. The project was to set up and manage socially useful small businesses that would offer opportunities for co-operative working leading to independent business ownership.  With the help of PEER we succeeded and in Rossendale now have more social enterprises than anywhere else in Lancashire.

I am proud of and enjoy my five children, ten grandchildren and one great grandchild. I do try to retire but keep finding new and interesting projects. Even reading and Sudoku pall after a bit.  I have made many friends and gain great pleasure, fun and satisfaction from what I do.

PEER Support Volunteer Profile: Sheila Sivieri

I used to introduce myself as a serial volunteer being unable to sit on my hands when someone asked for help. This resulted in my becoming a member of the PEER Board, founder member of Valley at Work Network for small businesses in Rossendale as well as member, Trustee, Vice-Chair and then Chair of the Bacup Consortium Trust.

Not a native of Rossendale (born over the hill in Burnley) I moved here in 1992 and have come to love this area more than I at first thought possible. On arriving in Rossendale 7 months pregnant with twins I found myself isolated and spent most of the first three years imposing myself on friends and family back in Burnley. I first made friends here when my children started to attend playgroup and then Nursery and my first volunteer role was as a member of the school’s PTFA.

As Chair of the Bacup Consortium it was my joint honour to sign the lease that enabled the group to develop an outstanding social enterprise at Stubbylee Community Greenhouses. I found myself drawn to the site and spent some happy times as greenhouse manager. The Consortium also offered me the opportunity to train as a mentor in the Bacup Chat programme and I gained valuable skills in data inputting.

In 1999 I set up a small haberdashery and crafts business called Who Dares Pins on Bacup Market. During that time I became a Bacup Representative on the Market Liaison Group and helped the Consortium run it’s Victorian Christmas Market and start the Bacup Booty car boot sale. My business was moderately successful and after a few years I moved it into a shop on Burnley Road.

My qualifications include a handful of ‘O’ Levels, an NNEB (child-care), a wealth of life experience and common sense and a sincere belief that Rossendale is a beautiful place to live and work.

PEER Support Volunteer Profile: Dave Taylor

Having moved only 6 miles in my 47 odd years, I am proud of my local knowledge and contacts within Rossendale.

From an early age I was aware that hard work was essential to happiness and success in life. I earnt my first blue £5 note at the age of 7 , transporting waste paper up a hill at “Park Hotel” , to my fathers Corsair at home. “Uphill” started to be a byword for efforts due to come in the future!

By the age of 11, I was being educated at BRGS but enjoyed my 3 paper rounds and the socialising this brought, too much. Having left school ASAP with a handful of O-Levels , I carried on my part-time work at a pig farm too full time management of such.

Again, socialising got the better of me (girls) and I became homeless and unemployed! Not as bad as it sounds- started living with girlfriend in her Dad’s pub!

From here I was JJ Ormerod’s first kitchen employee and started £25 a week YOP scheme. Within 3 years I had my own home, company car and family earning £12k. I had learnt so much from the people around me and was enjoying life within Rossendale.

After a couple of “valued experiences”, I returned to Rossendale and my first foray into self-employment. Disaster! The Eighties recession and a building fire at Milnrow (my industrial premises within and un-insured) caused my relocation to Rossendale and subsequent bankruptcy.

Life was not looking so good but hey, I still had my kids every weekend and my little old Golf GTi ! Friends and family supported me but idle hands and all that!

Needless to say, 9 montsh later, BnQ beckoned. Not for long though, self-employment beckoned. My weekend commitments, already strained for 9 months, charged me to part with the anti-social hours of these multi-nationals and again impose myself on the paying public.

It was at this time that “putting something back” really embraced me. My children were now young adults and I felt society was becoming un-fair. Within my community, Bacup Consortium started and I joined this young group with passion and commitment. After 12 years I am vice-chair and still as passionately involved as ever with other associated community commitments (REAL and here at PEER).

Along the way I have sat on various LSP boards, mainly around fields my lateral thinking proposed, yet also around good old fashioned “justice” views.

PEER, along with its partners have really liberated my thoughts about my community. The people within our group really “bounce ” off each other and make me so proud to be from Rossendale! (Bacup and Whitworth more though!!)

All I can say to people out there, after leaving school with just a handful of O-levels and manners is -COMMUNICATE ! I have drank with CEO”s of world banks, partied with some of our countries top gangsters, spoke with Cabinet Ministers and enjoyed friends all over the world. From this, you can draw your own passions from within and maybe, like me, help others to fulfil theirs!

Cheers

Peer Support Volunteer Profile: June Kirkham

My motivation is a determination that my grandchildren can have fulfilling jobs here in Rossendale. I am an ideas person with a wealth of practical skills that people find useful. I am a qualified hairdresser and beauty therapist, but my speciality is remedial work for people with health challenges. I am my own most critical client… and my own favourite therapist!

I have been involved as a volunteer with PEER Support since it started in 2003, so I have a very clear take on what is involved in helping people to turn their enterprising ideas into sustainable businesses. I have mentoring experience through the Bacup CHAT program, where I supported local people to overcome barriers to returning to work. My biggest asset is a personal style that allows people to feel safe as I help them solve their problems. If you want a mentor with access to the PEER membership, and without the sense that I know more than you, then ask for my support.

Because I joined Peer Support,  I had the backing to encourage Bacup Consortium Trust to take the lease of the former council run greenhouses where flowers and vegetables are now grown. Because I developed new awareness of my own strengths, I chose not to apply for a paid job writing reports for the NHS when they funded the project for 3 years. This led to wonderful Souta Creagh accepting the post and bringing Incredible Edible over the hill to Rossendale. Because I attended the presentation by Karrimor on the mountain bike project in Snowdonia and its effect of raising the local economy, just as the Eden Project had in Cornwall… I came back buzzing and with back-up we now have the Adrenaline Gateway rated in the worlds best 15 bike tracks..and improving. Because I met Lesley McDowell at a Valley at Work meeting, I went to Woolfest in Cumbria and I want to create a textile school in Rossendale so we can gain skills and be our own designers! I have met some lovely people. Or I could have stayed home with my knitting.

If I won the lottery I would invest in Rossendale!