And it's goodbye from him...
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Business guru Paul Andrews is stepping down from running IslandWorks at Sheppey’s rebuilt Royal Naval Dockyard Church.
The serial entrepreneur, who has been with the former church since it reopened three years ago as a community and networking hub after an £8 million revamp, has decided it is time to retire and is handing over the reins to the Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust.
In an exclusive interview with Sheppey Scene, Paul, 70, said he first thought about quitting last year. But recent changes introduced by the government, such as increased National Insurance contributions for employers, had convinced him it was now time to go.
He said: “The lease comes up for renewal in June but I was aware I had to give six months’ notice if I wanted to step away. At the time, the government’s budget changes were starting to kick in and our costs were beginning to go through the roof.
“This building takes a huge amount of money to keep warm. So, with that, and the fact that I’m not getting any younger, I decided I wouldn’t renew the lease.
He admitted: “I never thought I would get to the point when I didn’t want to run a business of some kind but the political situation in this country is now such that it is fruitless trying to run a small business. It’s totally pointless.
“Politicians don’t understand the effect their ‘small changes’ have on a business. They are huge. The problem with politicians is that they make short-term decisions because they are only in power for a few years and they play to their audiences without looking at the consequences of the domino effects. It’s bonkers. Half the time they’d be better off just leaving things alone.”
Friends are not convinced he will manage to keep to his promise of “doing absolutely nothing” once he steps down but he has already confirmed he will continue to host his weekly Business Bunker internet radio show on Tuesdays.
“But that’s just a hobby,” he said.
Although he added: “The amount of people who have gone bust or closed their businesses in the past year is really sad.
“If I was in government, I would completely undo the stupid NI thing. And I’d also look at the decision to hike the minimum wage above inflation.
“I am a great believer in paying people well for what they do but this April the minimum wage for an adult went up to £12.71 an hour. The actual cost to me was £16. That means your cup of coffee is going to cost £5. And that’s not sustainable. And, course, when you put up the minimum wage, all the differentials have to go up, too. That’s a killer.
“On top of that, energy costs are eye-watering. The biggest thing the government could do to help would be to take off the 20% VAT on commercial energy. Yes, companies can claim it back but in a building like this, last November its energy bill was £15,000 for the month for gas and electricity.
“We did a lot of work to minimise that, like turning the heating off at weekends. But then it took a long time to warm up on the Monday mornings. During the winter it’s a nightmare.”
He said IslandWorks had three elements: the coffee shop and food bar; the hire of the events and meeting spaces and running the upstairs co-working hub.
As it turned out, the events and meeting room hire became the most popular. The coffee shop remained the main breadwinner. But the co-working space proved to be his greatest disappointment.
He said: “We kept reducing the prices until it now costs less than £5 a day to work here. But it costs more than that to heat the place.
“The original budget needed 40 members to break even. We reached 26 at one point but now we are down to five. The co-working market in general has changed. The government retrospectively changed business rates and backdated it to 2022.
“But the biggest issue has been the cost-of-living crisis. People are struggling so they decide to save the 10 quid and work from home. Co-working took off because people didn’t want to work from home but they didn’t want to commute to the office. Now it’s gone the other way.”
He said the sector had also suffered from being too popular.
“Many councils decided to jump on the bandwagon. And anyone with spare office space did the same. So the market became saturated.”
He said most hubs aimed at the self-employed. But on Sheppey there were not enough entrepreneurs to go round. One of the few successes has been Lee Jarmain’s Pyramid Project which seeks to get youngsters not in education, employment or training (NEETS) into work.
So, how did he become a businessman?
“Oh, that’s a long story!” he said. “I left Vinters Boys School a month short of my 15th birthday in July 1970 - when the headmaster asked me to. But that same day I got a job at Turkey Mill in Maidstone.
“The interview was incredibly intensive. I had to stand against a wall and they measured how tall I was. At the time I was 4ft 11in. The job was as a grease-monkey. They needed someone tiny to crawl into the machinery while it was still running to oil the bearings.”
When Turkey Mill closed during the 1972 miners’ strike, because it was coal-fired, Paul and the rest of the staff were made redundant. Paul ended up at Crows in Maidstone where he made number plates and hydraulic pipes for vehicles in a shed at the back of the shop.
After deciding the shed was too cold to work in the winter, he went to the Youth Employment Office seeking a new job somewhere warmer. They gave him a psychometric test and decided he might be good with figures. So he was sent to have an interview at Kent County Council’s supplies department at Springfield.
He recalled: “I got the job and started the following Monday.”
After two years working in Maidstone and living in Bearsted with his parents he decided to seek fame and fortune in the bright lights of London. He and a friend rented a bedsit and Paul found a job with the Abbey Life insurance company manning the phones.
After the windows of his bedsit were blown out by an IRA bomb Paul decided to return home and on the train back bumped into a former school friend who was working for KCC and desperate to recruit a goalkeeper for the works team.
Paul recalled: “I went for an interview with their computer department but all I was asked was who I had played for and how many goals had I conceded. Incredibly, they hired me as a trainee computer operator and put me down to play my first game on the Saturday!”
Much to Paul’s surprise, he liked working with computers and helped set up the council’s new data centre at Kings Hill, Malling.
After getting itchy feet he moved back to London for Moss Bros as computer operations manager then joined an American oil company, a nuclear engineering company and then Citibank for 10 years, ending up as a vice-president at the age of 24 in charge of electronic banking trials.
Following the city’s Big Bang, Paul was headhunted by investment firm Goldman Sachs and helped build their first electronic trading desks before quitting to become a consultant.
He went on to invest in company which staged events with keynote speakers. At one show the speaker failed to show, so Paul was roped in to give the lecturer.
He said: “It was the first time I had ever done anything like that but I managed to bluff my way through. At the end of the talk a chap came up and asked if I’d do the same for his company. It turned out to be the computer firm IBM UK. And he offered me £1,000 an hour. I accepted!”
Paul carried on working the international talk circuit for 15 years, only giving it up when he became a dad. To bring in an income, he founded Jobs In Kent, the county’s first online employment portal in 1998 – much to the horror of local newspapers.
As part of his slowing down, Paul, from Tenterden, has sold most of his business interest including Jobs In Kent (to his staff) and his stake in Channel Radio. He is now left with just Fruitbowl Media, the parent company of IslandWorks.
And his old age pension!
“I live on that now,” quipped the grandad and father of two, as he slipped on his headphones for another Business Bunker show co-hosed with his pal Jules Serkin from Whitstable.
Business is still very much in his blood, despite whatever else he may say.
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What happens to the Dockyard Church now?
Members of the Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust have revealed their plans for the future of the former Royal Naval Dockyard Trust at Blue Town after Paul Andrews announced his retirement.
Paul, 70, and his company IslandWorks have run the grade II listed building since it was reopened to the public three years ago.
Speaking at the May meeting of the Island Forum at Sheppey United’s football ground at Halfway, Emma Harkup confirmed: “The trust is assuming control in five weeks.
“We are a group of people with a diverse range of professional skills with a local-focussed, hands-on approach so we hope we are going to be able to do it justice.
“It is one of Sheppey’s most important heritage locations which we hope to breathe new life into. It is a symbol of resilience and a place where heritage can work for the future of the Island.
“We have the opportunity to transform it into a vibrant community hub. Our vision is to preserve and celebrate that heritage and to create a financial, sustainable community space we can all enjoy.
“We want to support local businesses, people and young entrepreneurs and bring education, enterprise and wellbeing together under one roof.
“The community is at the heart of this opportunity. We would like to engage with local schools, colleges, community groups, wellness sessions, creative workshops and weddings and everything in between.
“We are in the process of championing some local artisan suppliers we can all join together and market across the network of Sheppey to build an exposure of our building and their supplies.
“We will be encouraging partnerships with local trades and support for young entrepreneurs looking to go out into the big wide world of business.
“We are holding business breakfasts and would like to stage market days to showcase jobs and new talent. We want to create a destination hopefully the community will want to visit again and again.
“For us, the future of our building starts now. We are very excited to be assuming control and engaging more with the community and hope the building will be used more. Together, we can build something sustainable and inspiring.”
She also published an email address and a QR code for people to get in touch.
Emma, who works from the building three days a week, said: “At the moment, we are handing the transition from one supplier to another which can create hiccups in communication. We are registering people’s details so we can keep them up to date with news and events.”
For almost 200 years the Grade 2* listed church, designed by George Leadwell Taylor, stood as a marker of civic and naval pride in the Royal Naval Dockyard at Sheerness.
But it had been left to decay after a fire swept through it in 2001, completely destroying the roof.
Historic England declared it one of the most significant buildings on their at risk register, and the Heritage Lottery Fund offered match funding for its restoration which was led by Will Palin.
The building was rescued from dereliction and repurposed as a community café, event space and youth employment hub by Hugh Broughton Architects working with conservation specialists Martin Ashley Architects.
Want to know more about the history of Sheerness and Sheppey? There is a day of top-quality talks and presentations on Saturday, June 13, at the Dockyard |Church organised by the Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust as part of the Festival of Sheppey. The line-up features Martin Verrier on The Dockyard and Ship Repair at Sheerness; Andrew Byrne on John Rennie and the Rebuilding of Sheerness Dockyard; Patrick Wright on Sheppey, Sheerness and the Dockyard; 200 Years of Sheppey Tourism by Martin and Rosemary Hawkins and exhibits from the Kent Archaeology Society. Admission free but donations appreciated. Call 01795 342355.
To register your details to be sent regular updates, email events@dockyardchurch.co.uk
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