Peter Vardy (businessman)
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Sir Peter Vardy is a successful British businessman from Durham specialising in the automotive retail business. He appeared in the Sunday Times Rich List 2004. He is one of the UK's most generous philantrhopists, via the Vardy Foundation which is particularly active in supporting community projects in North East England.
[edit] Business Interests
Vardy took control of the car dealership Reg Vardy plc in 1976, after the death of the founder. In the late seventies was successful in acquiring franchises to sell various brands in the UK. From 1982 he expanded into the volume car market, first with British manufacturers and subsequently with European and Japanese marques. In January 2006 the dealership was sold to the largest UK car dealership chain, Pendragon Cars.
Vardy was awarded the inaugural Industry Personality of the Year Award in a round of Automotive Management Awards and received a knighthood for services to education in the Queen's Birthday Honours list of 2001[1].
[edit] Commitment to City Academies
Vardy has funded the building of a number of City Academies. The bulk of these form the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, a coalition of Christian schools based in the north of England. These are run as part of the mainstream of England secondary school education, and in some cases were formed by taking over schools that had low performance previously. The Emmanuel Schools have been very popular with parents, and have achieved outstanding results in Ofsted assesments.
This is part of a wider trend: church schools have a long track record in the UK of achievement and are usually over-subsribed, and successive governments have encouraged their growth. However in the case of the Emmanuel schools, despite their obvious success, some have voiced concern over the apparent promotion in such schools of doctrines such as creationism.
There have been a number of media reports about this issue - for example [2] that Vardy rejects the theory of evolution in favour of creationism. However, in an interview with the BBC Today Program[3], broadcast 15th April 2006, Sir Peter pointed out that he did not hold fundamental creationist beliefs stating, "I believe that God created the earth and created man in his own image, quite how long it took him I don't know". He claimed to exert no influence over the curriculum of the schools he sponsors beyond insisting on a "chrisitan ethos" and that he would be concerned if creationism was taught as fact in his schools. Vardy complained that a comment made 5 years ago in which he intended to convey only a belief in a "creator God" rather than a literal belief in the bible creation stories, had been mis-interpreted and blown out of proportion by the media.
