TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2013 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2013

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16 ❙ THE BIG ISSUE

Community spirit drives theCultural Quarter forward

Leicester’s St George’s Cultural Quarter is continuing to grow as a city centre destination, with new businessesmoving in and thousands of people visiting for the recent Light the Night festival. City centre director S a ra hH a rr i s o n reports on the setting up of a Creative Industries Business Investment Area centred on St George’s andhow the local community is shaping plans for its future

Investing in creativity

With the award-winningCurve Theatre, bars, res-taurants and workspacesfor artists, designers andcreative businesses,

Leicester’s Cultural Quarter is fast becom-ing a vibrant area of the city centre.

It fuses together elements of the city’smore traditional architecture with a moderntwist to create a cosmopolitan cultural en-v i ro n m e n t .

Leicester is an enterprising city. It has along-standing reputation for innovation,creativity and entrepreneurialism.

A priority in the city mayor’s EconomicAction Plan is to accelerate business devel-opment in sectors with strong potential forg rowth.

To do this, we are establishing four Busi-ness Investment Areas (BIAs) that focus onour priority sectors.

Across the city and county, more than5,000 people work in the creative industriess e c t o r.

According to a report called the Leicesterand Leicestershire Structure and Invest-ment Funds, it is the largest creative busi-ness cluster outside of London.

The Creative Industries BIA will becentred on the St George’s Cultural Quarterat the heart of the city, which has been trans-formed from a former textile and shoe hubinto a thriving area for creative industries,artists, designers and craftspeople. It hasalready benefited from significant public in-ve s t m e n t .

More than 100 creative businesses are loc-ated in the Cultural Quarter.

Creative business growth has been sup-ported by new cultural facilities and venues,the city’s two world-class universities, qual-ity residential housing schemes and targetedinvestment in the public realm.

Working alongside the Cultural QuarterBusiness Association, the city council isplanning a further rapid expansion of theCultural Quarter as a great place to work,play, learn and live.

The creative Industries BIA is helping todeliver that ambition.

Sharing ideasMore than 200 people attended an eventwhere they could share their opinions of theCultural Quarter.

The Cultural Quarter community plan-

ning event was held over two afternoons lastmonth, and was hailed a great success.

The event was aimed at local people wholive and work in the area as well as visitors tothe Cultural Quarter.

Don Munro, of the Cultural QuarterBusiness Association, which organised theevent, said: “We wanted to get everyone’sopinions on the area – what is great, whatproblems need solving now and what ideasthey have for the future, so we can influencethe city council’s proposals for the quarter.”

The event was based around a lifelikemodel of the Cultural Quarter, which al-lowed those who attended to understand theneighbourhood and to stick flags into theplaces that they had commented on.

The model was covered with flags by theend of the event. More than 400 commentswere received, covering a range of topics in-cluding outdoor spaces, buildings, eventsand facilities.

Some of the ideas were fantastic: a newmusic hub for young performers, art galler-ies, street art and the need for specialistshops.

Other ideas suggested a new green spacearound the church of Saint George, and pro-posed new squares with mixed develop-ments to link Curve and Orton Square to thePhoenix. The improvement of the roads inthe quarter was also suggested.

Don said: “The response was fantasticand we are now in earnest talks withLeicester City Council to get some of thequick fixes done now.

“We will include some of the larger, moreambitious ideas in future plans for the Cul-

tural Quarter. We would like to thank allwho came along and gave their opinions fortheir enthusiastic response”.

Ramada’s big plansStill relatively the ‘new kids on the block’,having first opened for business in January2012, the Ramada Encore hotel marks thegateway to the Cultural Quarter and hastransformed the former Norwich Unionbuilding, in Charles Street.

The hotel’s glass-fronted Hub Restaur-ant, bar and pavement café have enjoyed thecustom of people working, shopping orstaying in Leicester.

Henrik Jespersen, the hotel’s generalmanager, said: “We are very pleased to be apart of the Cultural Quarter community andare encouraged by the enthusiasm and vis-ion that exists to develop this area.

“We are also looking to redevelop ourproduct further and have been working veryclosely with a team of designers, restaurantconsultants and brand experts to developour Hub, in Halford Street, into an excitingnew concept restaurant.

“This will see us move our reception andlounge areas to our vacant unit in CharlesStreet and then redevelop our Hub inHalford Street. We hope to be launching ournew product in Easter 2014.”

Another new restaurant due to open inthe area in early 2014 is 19Gale, an upmarketChinese restaurant with 11 function roomsproviding the perfect setting for karaoke,private dining or meetings. It will be locatednext to the NCP car park in Halford Street.

Light the NightThe Light the Night festival – organised aspart of Leicester’s Christmas lights switch-on – was a huge success, with more than10,000 people filling the streets ofLeicester’s Cultural Quarter.

PixelPyros was the city’s first truly digitalfestival of light.

It amazed visitors with a huge digital fire-works display using state-of-the-art pro-jectors and lasers beamed onto a massive60ft-wide screen.

Hundreds of people queued to touch thescreen and trigger multi-coloured rockets.

Buildings along Halford Street became agiant canvas for artists using projectors tobring to life a toy factory and beautifulChristmas animations.

The festival was put together by Phoenix,Leicester’s Cultural Quarter Business Asso-ciation (CQBA) and artists’ collective Cre-ative Manifesto.

Generous support for the festival was re-ceived from Curve, design agency Un.titled,volunteers and many other businesses in thecultural quarter.

You can view the PixelPyros display on-line by typing this shortlink into your webb row s e r:h t t p : / / g o o. gl / F 8 V h K R

Find out more information on the Cul-tural Quarter at:h t t p : / / w w w. v i s i t l e i c e s t e r. i n fo / t h i n g s - t o -see-and-do/cultur al-quarter/

You can also find out more by e-mailingSarah Harrison at:sarah.m.har rison@leicester.gov.uk

Left, the PixelPyros digitalfireworks display and, above, thecommunity planning event's modelof the Cultural Quarter

A client’s baddebt put myfirm in the red

Phoenix from the flames-style revivals of strickenfirms may save jobs, but itrankles with those leftwith unpaid debts.Business Editor IanGriffin takes a look at thiscontroversial area

BAD LUCK: Trevor Wood’s business was hit by a client’s £2,000 debt

Trevor Wood was left frustratedafter his website design busi-ness made a loss a few yearsago. Nothing unusual there,you may say, thousands of

small firms struggle to make ends meet onan annual basis.

However, his business would have made aprofit if it wasn’t for the £2,000 of bad debtfrom a client which had gone bust.

What was particularly galling was this cli-ent then set up again using a different busi-ness and doing exactly the same activity.

This was because that client had com-pleted a pre-pack administration, a contro-versial aspect of the insolvency process thateffectively allows companies to bounce backafter their collapse, leaving creditors, in-cluding the taxpayer, counting the cost.

Mr Wood, owner of website design firmNetwork Midlands, of Stoneygate,Leicester, said: “Over the years, I’ve knowna number of companies this has happenedt o.

“You can see a situation where a dominoeffect of pre-packs could be created, withsomeone eventually being left with a lot ofdebt they won’t get back.

“I think the system needs looking at. Isthere some way the debt can become at-tached to the director or directors which fol-lows them when they move on?

“In a way, it’s similar to tax avoidance.”The common comeback from insolvency

professionals is that such deals save jobs andwell-established companies which wouldhave otherwise been lost.

Pre-packs are said to have been madeeasier by the Enterprise Act 2002, whichsought to reduce the stigma of insolvencyand encourage a culture of entrepreneur-s h i p.

Last month, the business and assets of 68-year-old Invicta Plastics, of BraunstoneFrith, Leicester, the company behind theworld-famous Mastermind puzzle game,was sold to a company known as Making AMaterial Difference, run by people who hadbeen directors at Invicta up until its admin-istration a few days before.

Making a Material Difference had beenset up a few weeks earlier. The deal saved 11of the company’s 35 jobs. No details of thedebts left behind by Invicta have yet been

disclosed by administrator GrantThor nton.

Last week, it was announced 10 of the 21staff at Structured Technology Services(STS), of Grove Park, Enderby, were safe-guarded after a pre-pack administrationoverseen by Chris Stirland, partner at FRPAdvisory, also in Grove Park.

Quatrix bought the hardware mainten-ance and software arm of the business andwill continue to trade at the Grove Parkpremises. Cable and infrastructure installa-tion rights were sold to Scenariio.

Both businesses were set up by STS’s pre-vious management. STS has been left with adebt of about £500,000.

Mr Stirland said: “I’m not 100 per cent forpre-packs. It’s an option, but it shouldn’t bethe first option. It needs to be used in a sens-ible manner.

“The pre-packs that really annoy peopleare the ones where there has been no real re-structure of the business and it has seem-ingly been done just to reduce debts.”

Such debts include payment due to sup-pliers, rent, PAYE and VAT and employees’wa ges.

The other thing that irks critics is the factsuch deals allow firms to get round theTransfer of Undertakings (Protection ofEmployment) –or TUPE – re gulations.

Administrators have to write a report tothe Business Secretary detailing the reasonsbehind each pre-pack deal.

So, ultimately, they have an interest in en-suring everything is above board.

Another area of insolvency which cancause controversy is where the assets of

businesses are bought, sometimes out of li-quidation, and continue to trade.

This is a slightly different process to pre-packs because it relies on carrying out thetransition with as little fuss as possible.

The future of Syston-based Taylors Es-tate Agents was secured using such a processfive years ago.

Neil Money is a director of insolvencypractitioner CBA, of Leicester, and argues,like pre-pack administrators, that suchdeals may reduce debt liabilities but securejobs and businesses.

He said it’s a way of preserving a businessonce the “wheels had come off”.

He said. “It’s perfectly legal and it’s noth-ing new.

“What you are trying to do is create aseamless transition, but what you’re not al-lowed to do is have the same or a similarname.

“It may not be particularly savoury, I ac-cept that. But people work within the legalf r a m e wo rk . ”

It may be the only way to encourage en-trepreneurship is to make failure accept-able, but how much of the financial falloutdirectors should accept when things gowrong seems open to question.

WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ABOUT THEPRE-PACK ADMINISTRATION PROCESS?

Tell us: leicestermercur y.co.uk/business