It is all change on the business support front after yet another major shake-up in the delivery of advice for SMEs. North West Business Link is the latest incarnation and will come into being on April 2. Editor Andrew Calvert meets Peter Watson, the one-time construction industry apprentice who is the new chief executive of the £18 million organisation.

There was a degree of irony as Peter Watson talked about his early career as an apprentice plasterer. He was at the Cheshire offices of the North West Development Agency, sitting in a room at the old brewery conversion, surrounded by bare brick walls.

It was his last day at the office where he has been planning the launch of the new-look Business Link North West since September last year. There is a much more modern feel to his organisation’s new headquarters, just north of Preston, where he promises a better deal for companies throughout the region.

Watson, 45, describes the office complex at Bluebell Way as his operations centre for the new Business Link, which replaces the five sub-regional versions in Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.

The writing was on the wall for the old set up when the North West Regional Development Agency took over responsibility for the service in 2005. In an interview with Lancashire Business View that year, chief executive Steven Broomhead was scathing about Business Link.

“Too many people say to me that there are too many bodies claiming to offer good business support,” he said. “People who need business support should be able to get it without all the confusion there is.”

Watson is reluctant to criticise the previous regime, but concedes that levels of delivery varied significantly across the region. He also agrees that there is too much duplication of business support services.

“We do need to simplify the number of products that are out there,” he said. “It does need some attention and we shall be working with the NWDA to simplify things.”

The new-look Business Link will certainly be different. Gone are the expensive public relations campaigns, sponsorship of lavish business awards events and headline-grabbing initiatives such as Lancashire’s “Who Dares Wins”, created to encourage new business start-ups.

More importantly for many SMEs, there will be no subsidised consultancy or grants for specialist business advice.

Watson explained that Business Link would no longer provide any direct services to SMEs. “Our role is information, diagnosis and brokerage,” he said.

“We will not be grant-aiding or subsidising business support. We are an impartial and independent brokerage service. We want to be seen as a business support organisation which is run as a business.”

Watson explained that the new Business Link would operate on two levels, with the operations centre in Preston providing the “universal service”, effectively the gateway to business support. The centre would be open from 8am to 8pm during the week and would also welcome visitors over the weekend. “We feel that individuals looking to start a business up would want to contact us outside of normal working hours – we want to make it as accessible as possible.”

The second strand of the operation is a 170-strong team of brokers who will work, remotely, throughout the North West. They will liaise directly with businesses and signpost them to the most appropriate source of business advice.

“It is important that we offer an independent brokerage service that directs individuals to the right solution provider, regardless of whether they are in the public or private sector,” he said. “Any commercial decision between a customer and the provider is between them.”

Watson said the broker’s role was to find the best possible advice but stressed that all staff would be made aware of the subsidised or free support available from other organisations.

Another major change is in personnel. Around 150 of the 320 staff who were employed by the existing Business Links opted for redundancy and have had to be replaced.

“The people who have opted to move over to the new company have done so because they want it to move forward,” he said. “Those who opted for early release have been granted it.”

Watson insists that the new Business Link will be more effective. While the five existing regional Business Links are currently helping 60,000 businesses a year, the new model has a target of 100,000 by 2010. He said there would be 40 per cent more people on the front line, available to work directly with businesses.

“The service will be better into the future and reach more SMEs and some of the harder to reach groups,” he stressed. “We have a customer relationship management system in place that will judge the quality of the assistance we provide, not just count the traffic.”

Peter Watson had an uninspiring start to his working life, leaving school at the age of 16 to start a four-year apprenticeship as a plasterer around his home town of Rochdale. His employers Balfour Beattie spotted his potential and sponsored him on a business studies degree at the then Preston Polytechnic.

On graduation, he switched from construction to the footwear industry at the now defunct Premier Footwear in Poulton-le-Fylde where he ended up as operations manager. In 1991, he moved to the printing industry with the British Printing Company where he ended up as divisional managing director of the magazines division of Polestar in 1998, collecting an MBA from Henley on the way.

After six years in the post, he was part of a management buy-out of non-core parts of the Polestar group in 2004. After running the business for just over a year, the management team sold out in 2005.

“I was considering setting up as a consultant when the Business Link job came up,” he added. “They were looking for someone from the private sector and I was attracted by the prospect of managing the change that is needed. There is a real opportunity to exert an influence over the Business Link service and I am striving to go way above the minimum requirement.”