Inside the Peel empire: Is trouble brewing at the company that owns everything?
‘I have to say I did get a bit agitated last week. All this speculation about Peel’s in difficulty… we’re not'
Dear Millers — this edition is arriving in your inbox a little later than usual because something unexpected happened when we were digging into a story about Peel Group, the vast, all-powerful property company that owns something like 33,000 acres of land and water in the North West.
The unexpected twist? The company’s new chairman invited Mollie in for an interview at his headquarters. Mark Whitworth wanted to clear a few things up. No, Peel is not in trouble. No, the job losses we had heard about are not a cause for concern. Whitworth was annoyed — “my blood boiled,” he said — about the suggestion from one source that the company is combusting, which he utterly refutes.
The reason we were surprised to get an in-person, on-the-record interview with Whitworth is that Peel generally “operates behind the scenes”, as the journalist Guy Shrubsole puts it in his book Who Owns England?, “quietly acquiring land and real estate, cutting billion-pound deals and influencing numerous planning decisions.”
Peel is the company behind Media City and the Trafford Centre — both of which were built on land that it owned. But the sheer scale of its land ownership and development activity boggles the mind. It has dozens of massive projects in the pipeline including putting 2,700 homes on the once-wild Pomona Island, building 1,000 homes and a controversial golf course at Hulton Park in Bolton, creating a new community in Worsley, Salford, building more than 1,000 homes in Tyldesley, Wigan and creating a 3,500-home development near Elton Reservoir in Bury.
So what’s going on inside the company — and what did we learn from our audience with the top man Whitworth, who only recently took over from Peel’s secretive founder John Whitaker as chairman of Peel?
Scroll down to read that if you’re a paying member — as always this edition is members-only, save for the mini-briefing at the top. The full edition also has a great list of things to do for the weekend. If you’re not a member yet, you really should join now to read the story, and the beautiful piece mentioned below.
On Tuesday, we published a lovely (members-only) piece about the not-yet-forgotten world of East Manchester by Phil Griffin, and it was very popular with members. “Always a treat when Phil writes a piece”, wrote one person; “Beautiful, melancholic writing”, commented another. In case you missed it, read the piece here.
“It’s not a media haunt anymore. It’s trust fund kids with pretend fashion businesses”. This week’s Mill podcast asks: Who is going to join Soho House Manchester? Listen now.
From today’s sponsor: If you’re a lover of independent culture, art, music, and creativity, check out what’s happening in your area on Manchester Independents — a free online platform showcasing the best new independent work. There’s everything from artwork-making workshops and open studios to interactive installations on climate change and AI-generated performances that take you on a walking tour across the city. Check out the full range of events or even upload your own listing here if you have a new project coming up.
Your Mill briefing
The human rights organisation Liberty is supporting three men from Moss Side who are contesting murder convictions handed to them as teenagers. Reano Walters, Durrell Goodall and Nathaniel “Jay” Williams were convicted of the 2016 murder of Abdul Hafidah under controversial joint enterprise laws, which allowed the police and CPS to convict them even though they had no direct hand in the murder. The three men say that institutional racism played a part in their convictions and that prosecutors used a misleading “gang narrative” to convince the jury. Liberty says that these allegations of gang membership are disproportionately used against black people and that the evidence often used — friendships, private messages, musical taste — potentially breaches the European Convention on Human Rights.
North Manchester General Hospital is finally going to be rebuilt, reports the MEN, as part of a five-year project aiming to transform the crumbling site. The government has given the green light to plans to rebuild the Victorian premises, with a start date planned for 2025. By 2030, an end date which Health Secretary Steve Barclay insists is “realistic”, the multi-million-pound plans will see several new facilities added to the existing hospital including an education hub, a mental health inpatient unit, and a new residential community in the Crumpsall area. The final and confirmed plans are expected to be published in spring 2024. Earlier this year, a senior figure at the hospital told us about the struggles of trying to operate a modern hospital out of a “Victorian workhouse infirmary”, adding: “The patients have got a really raw deal.”
Depot Mayfield will be the site of a new Royal Horticultural Society urban show scheduled for April 2024, the RHS has announced. Usually better known for their regular flower shows, such as the Chelsea Flower Show, the RHS want to use their urban show in Manchester’s city centre to demonstrate the gardening opportunities available to those who live in industrial and city locations with little or no garden space. The event will see the former railway station transformed and overtaken by plants. Those interested can get involved on the RHS website here.
And finally: Our weekly podcast is out and we’ve done an episode about the arrival of Soho House in Manchester. A whole podcast episode about a posh private members’ club, after you’ve already devoted thousands of words to it in the newsletter! What on earth is going on with the editorial decision-making at The Mill? Good question. It’s August and we’re scraping around at the bottom of the news barrel. No, actually, we think it’s an interesting story — one of those launches that tells you something about Manchester, and about what people in London think of Manchester. Have a listen via your favourite podcast app.
Is trouble brewing at the company that owns everything?
By Mollie Simpson
A couple of weeks ago, we received a tip about Peel Group, the billion-pound property empire known for developing Media City and the Trafford Centre and owning massive stretches of land along the Manchester Ship Canal. Someone close to the company said Peel had “combusted” and was going through a “major restructure”.
“The culture of Peel has broken down,” an ex-staffer told us. “People think they gave that business everything, and now that business has turned around and shat on them.” A quick search on LinkedIn revealed that several Peel employees — mostly in marketing, communications and engagement roles — had announced they had left the company.
So what’s going on? Is a giant company that seems to own half of the North West really in trouble? Last week, I got on a tram to the Trafford Centre and spent some time snooping around Peel’s head office to find out.
I approached a dozen or so employees outside the dreary glass office block: five said “no comment”, three didn’t know anything, two said they’d heard something about a restructure “on the grapevine” and one called the building’s security on me. Shortly afterwards, an irritated-looking man in a suit turned up and escorted me off the premises.
Then, much to my surprise, I got an email offering an in-person interview with Mark Whitworth, Peel Group’s chairman — the first time since he’s spoken publicly since he took on the role five months ago.
‘My blood boiled’
“I’ve got nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing to hide,” says Whitworth when we find him at the company’s HQ. I’m with The Mill’s editor and we’re sitting across a table from Whitworth in a bland meeting room.
Whitworth wants to talk business strategy, but first, he has a bone to pick with me. In his hands is an email I sent to Peel’s press officer last week, which he has printed out. He points to the key part of the email, which is underlined in orange highlighter and which he describes as “speculation”. In the email, I had asked Peel if they could verify some claims about the company going through a major restructuring.
“When I saw that, my blood boiled,” Whitworth says, pushing the email towards me. He suggests that the situation has been exaggerated by a few aggrieved ex-employees. “Quite frankly, it’s crud.”
Since he took over as chairman in April this year, Whitworth has embarked on a “modest” restructure, which he says was long-planned and certainly is no reason to panic about the business. How many people have lost their jobs? Tens rather than hundreds, he says.
Whitworth acknowledges “the market is tough” with higher interest rates, rising construction costs and delays in the planning process. He acknowledges that Peel lost a “considerable amount of money” when the Trafford Centre’s owner Intu went bust a few years ago. It had been reported by the Sunday Times that Intu’s troubles caused a major strain on Peel’s finances, with the company forced to sell some of its stake in Peel Ports and Liverpool airport in 2019 as a “retail bloodbath” sent “shockwaves” through Peel’s empire.
But overall, Whitworth’s tone is positive and his message is bullish, saying that the book value of Peel’s assets is higher than ever. “I would genuinely say we are in a stronger position than we have ever been,” he tells me.
The Peel empire
Peel was founded by the businessman John Whitaker in 1973 and made its name by acquiring vast swathes of land in the North, starting with redeveloping empty quarries into industrial sites and retail parks.
Little is known about the Whitaker family because they rarely grant interviews. In his recent book Manchester Unspun, the journalist Andy Spinoza describes Whitaker as an “aggressive property entrepreneur”, and “secretive tax exile” who helicopters in for board meetings from the Isle of Man, a tax haven.
What’s the billionaire Whitaker like in person? “He's very dapper, very old fashioned,” one acquaintance of his tells The Mill. Manchester’s regeneration in recent times has been fronted by charismatic, media-hungry developers like Tom Bloxham and Tim Heatley, but that’s certainly not how Whitaker operates. “Businesses reflect the character of their driving minds,” observes someone who has had frequent dealings with Peel, “and Whitaker is a monosyllabic recluse.”
Where some developers are keen to play a part in the public square, the Peel founder doesn’t fit that mould. “Whitaker just cuts too quickly to what's in his interests; there is no hinterland.”
Until recently, Peel was under the tight control of the Whitakers. But around a year ago, John Whitaker, then 80 years old, decided he wanted to take a step back from the day-to-day running of the business and started to think seriously about “succession planning”, according to Whitworth.
Whitworth, who took over as chairman in April this year, says Whitaker wanted to bring him in to deliver significant changes. In particular, it was thought Peel had taken on too much cost in its central operation and needed to get leaner. Peel’s model is to develop large schemes and then sell large stakes in them to outside investors in order to re-invest the money in new projects. It’s a sprawling company that heavily mortgages its assets, meaning it is feeling the pain of rising interest rates more than most.
Whitworth is from Altrincham, joined the business in 2006 and was named CEO of Peel Ports in 2010. The wider Peel Group is a highly diversified company that has business interests in retail, fracking, shipping, development and more, and the sheer amount of land and buildings that Peel owns in the North is staggering. At the time of writing, Peel owns 13 million square feet of buildings and over 33,000 acres of land and water, and it boasts that it is “responsible for some of the most transformational projects in the UK today”.
“They're not secretive, but they don't really court publicity,” says the person who has dealt with Peel. “They are a deeply utilitarian company. They are all about the bottom line.”
The genesis of Peel’s wealth was in retail parks and light industrial units, built on former landfill sites where John Whitaker’s family used to own quarries. They gained notoriety in the 90s, when Whitaker invested heavily in the Manchester Ship Canal, owning 35 miles of canal from Manchester to Liverpool and gathering swathes of land on each side. Eventually, Peel would gain ultimate control of the canal and acquire enough landmass to put forward a planning application to create the gigantic and garish Trafford Centre.
Spinoza describes how Whitaker became “Manchester’s enemy number one,” in the process: it took a prolonged battle with 12 councils who believed a massive shopping centre would negatively impact local high streets and the city centre, a row that would eventually reach the House of Lords, who ultimately voted in Whitaker’s favour.
Readers might be familiar with Peel in relation to more recent developments too. There’s the massive Trafford Waters project, which aims to build 3,000 homes and 850,000 sq ft of offices between the Trafford Centre and the ship canal. The company also wants to build 1,000 homes on a thousand acres of land in Hulton Park, Bolton, plus a golf course.
It’s been dubbed “a housing project in golf’s clothing” and a “Trojan horse” because of Peel’s attempt to circumvent green belt planning restrictions by promising a golf course, and delivering that with housing. Whitworth reveals that he has just signed up a “top ten” European golfer to promote Peel’s plans for Hulton Park to host the Ryder Cup.
The new broom
“The headache that they [Peel] may have is the monthly cost of their mortgages will have increased enormously,” says a property industry insider when I mention the story I’m working on. “The value of the land and the buildings that they own will be decreasing with house prices deflating and they'll be getting squeezed in the middle.”
That’s probably one of the reasons Whitworth has embarked on a cost-cutting drive, removing dozens of jobs that he says built up in the company’s central operation during the pandemic.
“It was savage,” one ex-employee says about the departures. “People think they gave that business everything, and now that business has turned around and shat on them.” Another described the job losses as an example of how Peel’s culture has “broken down”.
“We are doing things that are different,” Whitworth acknowledges. “And I accept the culture has changed, and it will continue to change, but it’s to ensure we are fit for purpose for the next 50 years. And that’s what leadership is about, isn’t it?”
In conversation with Whitworth, we broach the subject of Peel’s reputation. The popular image of Peel is one of an enormously powerful conglomerate that operates in the shadows, hoarding large swathes of land and relying heavily on public subsidy for its projects. What does he make of that?
“Absolute shame,” he says, looking genuinely gutted. He makes a positive argument for what Peel has done for the region, talking about the success of Salford Quays and how it was transformed from a “wasteland” into Media City, asking us to describe what we think of its current incarnation. Media City is undoubtedly impressive: 37 acres of TV and film studios, concert halls, a university and riverside restaurants. It brought the BBC to the North and is often credited with bringing high-paying jobs into Manchester.
I volunteer the word “extraordinary”. Whitworth’s eyes light up. “Yeah! Your words not mine. It’s extraordinary,” he says. “But the reality is to those that it suits, we’re just this big horrible powerful conglomerate that just builds things. Peel, the nature of the success, it just means the larger you are the more people wanna have a pop at you.”
I suggest it’s unusual for us to be having this conversation — journalists are rarely granted a window into what’s going on at one of the North’s biggest development companies. He happily corrects me on this point, reminding me that he has “nothing to hide” and that he often speaks to “big-hitting papers and magazines”. “Take your own measure of me, I’m pretty straight as an individual,” he says. “All the time, everyone tells you it, but I am a pretty straight individual.”
He says he was irritated when one of his staff members said that they’d asked me to leave the property last week. “I said, ‘why did you do that?’” he says, saying again that he wants Peel to be open and transparent.
Whitworth describes himself as a “natural operator” rather than a sage-like visionary. He also has a reputation for being ruthless, something that he doesn’t deny. An ex-staffer told me that at a conference in June, Whitworth was being interviewed on stage when he was asked about his leadership style. He relayed an anecdote about having fired someone from Peel Ports for refusing to come into the office during one of the Covid lockdowns. Several Peel employees allegedly went home that evening and immediately started looking for jobs elsewhere.
“Life is all about context,” he says when I mention that anecdote. He explains the reason he wanted his employees in the office during Covid: to show the 2,000 crane operators and dock workers at Peel Ports that the executives “weren’t abandoning them”.
One individual refused, saying they’d prefer to stay at home. “So you go home, you stay home because you are not projecting the leadership that I think this business needs,” he says. “My style is to lead by example, even if I need to step in front of a bus because that’s what leaders do, and I expect the leadership of any organisation to lead by example.”
We use our precious access to nail Whitworth on one final hard-hitting topic: his favourite shop in the Trafford Centre. He admits he hasn’t visited in years and doesn’t particularly like shopping. We have time to ask another question: how regularly does he visit John Whitaker in the company helicopter? He’s willing to admit he does so regularly, then his personal assistant reminds him that he has another meeting and he lets out an audible sigh of relief.
“Apologies for my brash start,” he says, motioning to shake hands and say goodbye. “I have to say I did get a bit agitated last week. All this speculation about Peel’s in difficulty… we’re not.”
Correction 01/09/2023: An earlier version of this story referred to James Whitaker when we meant to say John Whitaker. Thanks to a Mill reader for pointing this out.
Our weekend to do list
Friday
🎶 The Bloomsbury String Quartet is performing much-loved excerpts from classic Warner Bros film soundtracks through the years (think: Casablanca, Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz). It’s hosted in a very atmospheric candlelit Manchester Cathedral, and entry is free.
🏳️🌈 Hatch has LGBTQ+ DJs playing all weekend to celebrate Pride, with a focus on queer reggaetón and Latin music. There is no extra charge beyond the price of food and drink, but make sure to reserve a table.
Saturday
🍕 You can embrace Italian-Mancunian fusion at Festa Italiana in Cathedral Gardens, which promises street food, cookery classes, and live music for the Italian community of Manchester and beyond. All are welcome, and entry is free.
🤖 Mancunian theatre makers leo&hyde have produced a dystopian walking tour of the city called “The Ruins of Earth” which was written by AI and presented by a robot known as X2-729. Experience a chilling and thought-provoking glimpse into a world where Manchester’s iconic skyscrapers have been abandoned and civilisation is long left behind. Book ahead by buying your tickets for this one.
Sunday
⚽ The National Football Museum’s Batteries Not Included exhibition gives young and old fans alike the chance to experience the classic table football game of Subbuteo under the watchful eye of the seasoned coaches from the English Subbuteo Association. Whether you’re a nostalgic veteran of the game, or a younger fan more accustomed to FIFA on a console, everyone can get involved and learn to flick-to-kick from the very best. The exhibit is included in the price of the entry ticket.
🎧 The Oast House in Spinningfields is hosting Manifest, a free live music event on Sunday. There will be live DJs, bands, drinks and street food. It’s free to attend, just turn up.
Monday
🏖️ If you can’t bear the stress of waiting for your hand luggage to get through security at Manchester Airport, you can get your dose of a beach holiday at the unlikely location of the Trafford Centre. This Monday, there’s a family event called Summer Daze which boasts a beach, water slides and a funfair, plus crafts and face painting. Tickets here.
🥒 Bolton’s annual Food and Drink Festival takes place this weekend, with local and nationally-renowned chefs offering delicious dishes and performing cookery demonstrations. This year, the event also offers live music and entertainment, much of it for free. Check out each day’s activities here.
It’s “Succession”. I love it. John Whitaker is an extraordinary, pugilistic, dapper man, more in the tradition of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and the robber barons of the American Gilded Age, than Bloxham, Heatley and successive social media self opinion trawlers of our narcissistic age.
Transparency to Whitaker is a glass dome in the ceiling of his own devising. He never played by the rules because he never picked up the playbook. No cosmetic chancellorships, awards or honours for him. No public postures. He’s a bullish, uncompromising businessman for whom all things go right, because he makes them. Until they don’t.
John Whitaker does not take to Twitter, by any other name. Son James recklessly took to the waters of the Manchester Sip Canal in 2008, when he swam a length (36 miles) of the family’s murky swimming pool, largely to prove he could survive the experience. God knows, he wouldn’t have got beyond Barton Dock in the 1950s.
Peel is business, no ifs, buts, greenwash or regeneration flim flam. I’m pretty sure there is a cupboard high in the superstructure of Trafford Centre just bulging with skeletons. I think Molly, Joshi and The Mill were ushered well clear of it. The Whitakers, Whitworth and Peel front of house do little to baffle us with weasel words and self-promoting good intentions. Until now.
Maybe there is trouble brewing in the tower on Holcombe Hill. Maybe we are heading to the Peel, season 4 all time series finale. But I’m certain John Whitaker will not be sitting in the Isle of Man composing his final tweet.
Well done on getting access to Whitworth. Good to see both sides putting their cards on the table.