| Former type | Limited by guarantee |
|---|---|
| Industry | IT |
| Genre | Not-for-profit |
| Fate | Liquidated |
| Successor | Redholt Ltd |
| Founded | 1966 |
| Founder(s) | UK Government |
| Defunct | 2010 |
| Headquarters | UK |
| Key people | Sir A Cleaver, Sir R Cockburn, D Fairbairn OBE, P Virgo, C Pearse, J Perkins, M Gough, S Markwell |
| Products | Filetab |
| Services | Information, advice, education, publishing, escrow & membership services |
| Owner(s) | Mutual |
| Employees | 500 at peak |
| Subsidiaries | NCC Blackwell |
| Website |
| Type | Limited Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | IT |
| Fate | Trading |
| Predecessor | Redholt Ltd |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Headquarters | UK |
| Services | Information, advice, education, publishing, membership services, Consultancy, Standards |
| Total equity | £12,000 |
| Owner(s) | T Ring, S Fox, K Vooght, S Markwell, S Sidhu, P Morris |
| Website | NCC |
The National Computing Centre (NCC) was an independent not-for-profit membership and research organisation that went in to administration before being liquidated in 2010. The name is now used as the trading name of a new company that changed its name from Redholt Limited to the National Computing Centre Limited (NCC Ltd) when its acquired the assets of NCC through a pre-pack administration arrangement. The new company, formed in 2010, maintains some of the ideals of the original company.
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The National Computing Centre was founded on 10 June 1966 by the Labour UK Government, as an autonomous not-for-profit organisation, in order to encourage the growth of computer usage in the UK and ensure that the necessary education and training was made available. NCC was one of the visible outcomes from Harold Wilson's "White Heat of Technology" speech and the formation of a Ministry of Technology, the others being the computer company ICL and chip maker INMOS (both now defunct).
Initially, most income came directly from government grants, but with the growth of NCC's commercial operations[1] this ceased in 1989. During the 1970s and 1980s NCC had a joint venture with Blackwell Publishing (NCC Blackwell) which was a significant publisher of academic computing books.
Between 1989 and 1996 NCC operated with 5 main divisions - Education, Consulting, Escrow, Membership Services, and System Engineering deriving income from membership fees and its commercial activities.
In 1996, the National Computing Centre sold its overseas education business, NCC Education, to stave off a financial crisis that occurred when the company breached its borrowing limits.
In 1999, it sold its commercial divisions (turnover of less than £10m), which provided Escrow, Consultancy, System Engineering services to its existing management team supported by ECI ventures for £5m[2]. This new company was named NCC Services Limited and later became NCC Group Limited [3] of which the National Computing Centre held a 20% share. John Perkins became the new Managing Director of National Computing Centre, which remained a not-for-profit membership organisation.
The NCC Services Ltd management team of Managing Director Chris Pearse and directors John Morris, Peter Bird, and Chris Sadler was strengthened in March 2000 by the appointment of Rob Cotton as Finance Director and who also took over control of the Escrow division in May of that year [4], with Morris leaving at that time. Following a substantial fall off of revenues as Y2K came and passed, and due to the failure of the company before this date to invest in its general consultancy, security, system engineering and escrow business during the Y2k period, the Group began to make monthly losses before the benefits of the changes to the Escrow business instigated by Rob Cotton were felt and the company returned to profitability.
Renamed NCC Group, in May 2000, and with Escrow now the cornerstone of the Group, Rob Cotton led a secondary management buy-out in 2003 valuing NCC Group at £30m and supported by Barclays Private Equity.[5] At this point, the National Computing Centre sold its shares in NCC Group as did Pearse, Bird and Sadler who left the business. The NCC Group floated on the AIM stock market in 2004 for £55m raising nearly £40m of new money. Since then through a number of successful acquisitions and effective management, the Group, by now fully a listed company on the London Stock Exchange since 2007, has grown to a market capitalisation of nearly £300m. The NCC Group now only provides global Escrow and Security services to over 15,000 customers including 94 of the FTSE 100.
NCC received substantial proceeds from the sale of NCC Group Limited (circa £11M between 2000 and 2003 plus dividends) and also from the multi-million sale of its iconic Manchester city centre buildings (Oxford House and Armstrong House) to Bruntwood Group (now the home of NCC Group plc). Following the retirement of Perkins, Michael Gough[6] was appointed as CEO in 2000 and NCC pursued a new strategy of rapidly developing and expanding its membership services by acquisition. Over the next six years and particularly after the second sale of its shares in NCC Group in 2003 acquisitions accelerated until all of the company's funds had been used to acquire a number of related companies, membership organisations, publications and publishing rights and to fund joint ventures. The acquisitions included: Management Consultancy News; Conspectus; CIO Connect; The Construction Industry Computing Association; Certus; The Evaluation Centre; Institute of IT Training; The Impact Programme; and PMP[7] [8]. Publishing rights acquired included the Naked Leader and joint ventures included: the NCC/Ashridge Business School MBA; NCC/AQA Applied ICT; and ProfIT.
Funds were also spent on new offices in Manchester and leasing opulent offices in London, which was entirely inappropriate for an organisation of this size. In addition, attempts were made at developing new products and services including the Open Source Academy and NCC Midas Web Hosting. Both were costly and ill conceived, the later being a hosting option that only offered support 5 days a week and during working hours.
The strategy initiated and implemented by Michael Gough failed completely and the National Computing Centre diminished in size and turnover. Despite the many millions that had been received, and spent, from the sale of its assets and despite the new businesses acquired, NCC made continued and unsustainable losses but no changes in strategic direction were made. By 2007 to stem the losses NCC was forced to rapidly dispose of all of the acquisitions[9] at a substantial loss and close a number of only recently established operations. Michael Gough was dismissed from the business in February 2008 as a consequence.
In March 2008, Steve Markwell was appointed as Chief Executive[10] and his time in charge saw no improvement to the company's fortunes or significant change in strategic direction. The only significant asset remaining, Filetab, being sold in 2009 and with losses and the size of the pension fund deficit increasing, the company was unable to meet its obligations and was placed in to administration by its management.
What the governance arrangements of NCC were that allowed the management under Micheal Gough to waste millions of pounds on an ill-conceived strategy and vanity acquisitions is unclear. Nor it is clear how and why the management was allowed to spend millions in capital receipts while not addressing the pension fund deficit.
In February 2010, NCC went in to administration and ultimately liquidation.[11] The few remaining assets and IP were transferred by a "pre-pack" administration arrangement to Redholt Ltd a new private company set up and owned by a group of six shareholders, including two former Directors of the insolvent National Computing Centre, thus distancing itself from the creditors, which included a substantial pension fund liability which resulted in the insolvency of the pension fund later that year.[12]
Redholt Ltd, was renamed as The National Computing Centre Limited (NCC Ltd) in Feb 2011. New NCC Ltd is not a mutual not-for-profit organisation but retains some of the member organisations of the liquidated company for whom it delivers some of the same products and services. It is still nationally recognised by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and the British Standards Institution, however, its fall from grace now means that the voice of computer user is better heard by independent, not for profit organisations such the BCS, SOCITM, ASSIST, etc. NCC extended its portfolio of services to include IT consulting.