NW business briefs: DSW; Resilience; Birkenhead Jobs Fair; Manchester University; MWT; Amion Consulting

Daresbury-based business advisory firm, Dow Schofield Watts (DSW), has played a key role in facilitating more than £809m-worth of deals in 2024, advising on 22 significant transactions spanning a range of sectors, including facilities management services, technology firms, food brands and more.
Despite challenging market conditions, the Dow Schofield Watts team saw an influx in deals in the lead up to the Autumn Budget, which contributed to an uptick in overall deal value. The total value of deals in 2024 marked a notable 36% increase from £594m in 2023, highlighting the firm’s strong position in the advisory space.
Private equity collaboration remained a central focus for Dow Schofield Watts in 2024. Of the deals completed, 10 saw the corporate finance teams working closely with private equity investors, providing strategic insight and advisory services to support growth.
Notable transactions included advising on the sale of Ruth Lee to Protect Medical, Alpine Fire Engineers’ acquisition of DAS Fir, Survey Solutions’ acquisition of JWG Survey & Engineering, Summa Equity’s investment into EA Technology and Three Hills’ investment into Operam Education.
Gregg Pendlington, partner in the Corporate Finance Team at Dow Schofield Watts in the North West, said: “This year has been a remarkable one for our team, marked by a flurry of successful deals. As we look ahead to 2025, our priority remains steadfast: delivering exceptional results and guiding our clients seamlessly through every stage of their transactions.”
Looking ahead, Dow Schofield Watts has recently made strategic board changes, in line with its ambitious plans for 2025. This includes the promotions of Shru Morris from Deputy CEO to CEO Designate, and Pete Fendall from Chief Operating Officer and Interim Chief Finance Officer to Chief Finance and Operating Officer. Shru Morris said: “2024 has been an incredibly strong year for Dow Schofield Watts, and we are extremely proud of the progress we’ve made supporting businesses across the UK, particularly during a period of economic uncertainty. The ramp-up in activity around the Budget towards the end of the year gives us confidence that the market will continue to stabilise into 2025.”
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Ryan Moffat
A new cyber security business is launching this month to help organisations in Cumbria and south-west Scotland combat the rising threat of cybercrime.
Resilience, part of Eco Group, launches in Carlisle and pledges to bring a new approach to protect businesses and organisations from the fast-changing and ever more complex techniques used by cyber criminals.
Ryan Moffat, head of Resilience, said: “Russia, China and North Korea want to disrupt operations in the UK. They will target any business with thousands of automated attacks in the hope of one getting through and giving them access into an organisation and all their data. I know of cases where businesses are receiving 10,000 phishing attacks every day.
“We are not talking big corporate organisations. We are talking small and medium sized operations because cyber criminals know these organisations are likely to have more weak spots in their defences.”
Ahead of its official launch on January 24, Resilience is already supporting clients against cyber criminals in a range of sectors including healthcare, professional services, and logistics.
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A Jobs Fair aimed at recruiting people into the Health & Social Care sector is taking place at The Hive in Birkenhead’s Bright Street, on TuesdayJanuary 21, 2025 from 2pm to 7pm and aims to connect employers and those considering working in this area.
There will be more than 20 employers in attendance including NHS Trusts and community care employers with a range of jobs across a large number of different roles, from Clinical Support Workers in the NHS to support worker in care homes or the community, healthcare or domestic assistant to activities coordinators, porters, healthcare cleaning professional, and more.
This project is funded by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, through the city region’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) allocation. The fund is a central pillar of the Government’s Levelling Up agenda, providing £2.6bn of funding for local Investment by March 2025.
The jobs fair is free to attend for employers and residents and those interested in working in the sector, and will also be attended by career support and education providers, including The University of Chester and Wirral Met College.
Cllr Tony Jones, Chair of Wirral Council’s Economy, Regeneration and Housing Committee, said: “Health and care is a crucial sector, providing support and assistance for the most vulnerable members of our community but we know they too often struggle to attract new staff. This jobs fair aims to help connect employers and those who might be looking to work in the sector so they can understand better what skills they can bring to it.”
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Applications are now open for a unique and innovative postgraduate course that will explore how we can transform the fortunes of biodiversity, launched by The University of Manchester.
According to the United Nations, 2021-2030 is “The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration”1, where everyone, from governments and businesses to individuals, needs to rethink their relationship with nature.
The new MSc Nature Recovery, Restoration and Rewilding (NR3) will respond to these needs by challenging students to consider the theoretical and practical implications of initiatives such as rewilding, which provide novel and ambitious approaches to restoring nature, while also gaining a critical understanding of how these approaches can tackle the twin global crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
Enhancing biodiversity requires a wholesale change in attitudes towards nature, from individuals through to large corporations. The programme is unique in its approach to stimulating this change as its curriculum goes beyond conventional conservation methods, embracing knowledge and skills from the natural and social sciences, to give students the training and skills needed to recover, restore and rewild the world’s ecosystems.
The course will be led by Dr. Ian Thornhill and Dr. Anna Gilchrist from the School of Environment, Education and Development at The University of Manchester. It will deliver a programme of learning that focuses explicitly on the biodiversity challenges we’re facing and the innovative solutions that are needed to overcome them.
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MWT Planning founders
Three experienced town planners have set up a new business, MWT Planning, an independent planning consultancy with offices in Lancashire and Cumbria.
MWT co-founders, Christie McDonald, Claire Wilkinson and Harry Tonge, have a combined 60 years of experience in both the public and private sectors between them. The MWT Planning team covers all planning specialisms and can deal with sites throughout the UK.
Christie McDonald said: “We have been colleagues for a number of years and, after working together so well over those years, it felt like the next logical step was to set up business together.
“The primary aim of MWT Planning is to provide planning advice and services to developers, landowners and private individuals across all sectors of development to secure residential, commercial, recreation, leisure and mixed-use developments anywhere in the UK.
“The three of us are members of the Royal Town Planning Institute and pride ourselves on approaching each job with an open mind and tailoring our advice on a case-by-case, site-by-site basis, to meet the client’s brief.”
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Simon Dancer
Liverpool-based Amion Consulting has been appointed to the new £15m Homes England Strategic Research, Economics and Evaluation Framework 2024-2028 to provide economic, evaluation and research services.
Membership of the framework, which can be used by a wide range of public sector organisations, is seen as the hallmark of quality within the economic development sector. Amion Consulting, which specialises in economic development and regeneration, maintains its unique position as the only firm to have been a member of the framework since it started in 2000.
Under past frameworks, Amion has helped to produce several industry-standard economics policy guides such as the pioneering Additionality Guide, now used across the globe to assess the real, additional impact of public interventions.
More recently, Amion prepared the business case for the £300m strategic brownfield development scheme, Hind Street Urban Village which aims to bring 1,500 new homes to Birkenhead. The business case successfully secured £25m of grant funding from Homes England to make the scheme viable.
Simon Dancer, Director, said: “Our position with Homes England has ensured we’ve continued to be a go-to, trusted partner for authorities and organisations for over two decades. With the Government looking to accelerate house building across England, we are perfectly positioned to support local partners with their growth ambitions.”