New home for Armstrong Watson following sustained North East growth

When Armstrong Watson first opened an office in Newcastle’s Quayside, it housed four colleagues, with the business a relative newcomer to the city. In little more than five years, however, the firm has had to relocate twice to larger premises following sustained organic growth and the acquisition of two North East accountancy practices. Its latest home, in One Strawberry Lane, shows much promise, and it’s hoped it will be the firm’s city centre base for many years to come.

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Armstrong Watson’s growth across the North East has been rapid.

In 2018, the accountancy, business and financial advisory firm launched its first office in Newcastle and since then it has seen major expansion across the region, growth across services and sectors, and the welcoming of many new colleagues.

Following the acquisition of the long-standing accountancy practice Joseph Miller in January, the firm has operated two locations in the city – at the City

Quadrant, in Waterloo Square, and from Joseph Miller’s offices in Milburn House, Dean Street.

Its move to the new multi-million-pound smart office in One Strawberry Lane will bring the 45-strong Newcastle team together under one roof.

The new office – housed within a £30 million, sixstorey building in the Gallowgate area of the city next to St James’ Park – has been designed by housing association Home Group, which has moved its head office there.

Recognising the economic importance of the region, Armstrong Watson initially launched a small, serviced office at the Regus Business Centre, expanding on longestablished offices in Hexham and Northallerton, just across the Yorkshire border.

Senior tax partner Jim Meakin joined as Newcastle office lead, and was also head of tax consultancy at the time.

He shared the vision of the huge opportunities for North East-based businesses and how the firm could help drive them forward.

Managing partner and chief executive Paul Dickson explains: “Our aim is to be recognised as the ‘go-to’ firm for family-owned businesses throughout the North.

“It had been an ambition for Armstrong Watson for as long as I can remember to have a presence in Newcastle upon Tyne as part of our growth strategy in the North East of England.

“We knew there was space for Armstrong Watson with our depth and breadth of offering, and since 2018 we have continued to build on the expertise we offer across all our service lines and sectors.”

Within two years, Armstrong Watson had outgrown its original Quayside base and moved to larger premises in the City Quadrant.

This was followed by the acquisition of Eura Audit Northallerton in February 2020.

Since then, the 155-year-old firm has continued to grow across the North East, and made two of its largest acquisitions – Patricia J Arnold & Co, in Hexham, in 2021 and, most recently, Joseph Miller, which saw the Newcastle team double in size, welcoming 20 new colleagues including partners David Gold, Chris Reah and Edith Chapman.

The Newcastle team is now led by tax partner Hydeam Sulton, who joined Armstrong Watson in May last year, and who also leads the firm’s VAT and indirect tax practice nationally.

Hydeam says: “The opening of our new office is a key element of our future growth and delivery plans in Newcastle and the North East.

“One Strawberry Lane is a landmark development and reflects our ambitions in the region.

“With the recent acquisition and now a state-of-theart new office, this is a really exciting time.

“I’m really looking forward to the benefits this will bring to colleagues and clients.”

The last 12 months have also seen the creation of a payroll team hub in Newcastle, alongside a recruitment drive across the wide breadth of the firm’s service lines.

The move to One Strawberry Lane continues extensive investment in Armstrong Watson’s northern stronghold and comes just months before the relocation of the firm’s head office in the centre of Carlisle to a new purpose-built site on the outskirts of the city.

Paul says: “We acknowledge the importance of investing in our teams, and of equal priority is the need to invest in the right environment for them to work in and provide our clients with the best possible service.

“We now have a full-service proposition in Newcastle, with strong accounting, payroll and tax teams.

“This gives us an incredibly robust foundation to build on our ambitions to grow further in the North East and to continue to support businesses in the region to maximise their opportunities to grow and prosper.”

David adds: “Apart from benefiting from a superb modern working environment, the move to the new office enables us to pool our resources more effectively, bringing our teams together to offer a comprehensive range of services to clients.”

Why the internet matters more than ever

With more than five billion people accessing the internet every day, the online world represents fertile ground for business growth. Here, Mark Harrison, RTC North scaleup director, uses his vast telecoms and software sector experience to highlight the importance of cyberspace to SMEs.

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My 40-year career has moved somewhat fluidly between software, telecoms and satellites.

From the European and German space agencies to roles in global telecoms providers, infrastructure builders, software and content delivery, major consultancies, start-ups and bootstrapped enterprises, my vocation has been as enjoyable as it has been broad. Now, you might think a career spanning both telecoms and developing applications is a common path. It isn’t. Most people stay in one or the other. Boxes, though, were never my thing – I see an opportunity and I take it.

Traditionally, developers had to work within the constraints of networks and the computing power and storage available to them.

Adoption was limited to those with networked devices, predominately Windows PCs with Intel Processors, known as the ‘Wintel’ platform.

Historically, the legacy telcos were either national or regional monopolies, who acted as gatekeepers and charged tolls to reach end users.

Moving data around was subsequently very expensive and dominated by point-to-point technologies. Each packet was transmitted with an address and a confirmation was sent upon its arrival.

This, and the high price of leased lines, meant software – if it was distributed at all – was stored in an on-premise server and shared on the LAN inside that building.

Only big corporations could afford to connect their global locations and create the first wide area networks. Mobile networks at this time were built for voice. Any data was an afterthought.

Indeed, mobile data was slow and expensive, with SMS originally used by engineers to message each other.

Yet this world of such unthinkably bad service and dial-up modems was only 20 years ago.

The internet has transformed the telecoms and software industries immeasurably.

The average price per bit, which is how telecoms companies measure their revenues, has fallen at a compounded rate of 23 per cent, per year, for 25 years.

That will continue to do so, as long as the internet continues to dominate the telecoms industry.

The internet itself isn’t a single network, it is an amalgamation of networks that have peering connections, and sits on top of other networks to form its global footprint.

It has four primary delivery mechanisms: wireless (4G/5G), twisted pair, coax and fibre optics.

Figures show 5.3 billion people have regular access to the internet, and this ability is driving great empowerment of business models.

Over the last 25 years, one per cent of GDP growth per year in the developed world has come from innovations brought about by the internet.

Being connected now means everyone can have multiple locations in multiple jurisdictions, not just major corporates.

We are seeing faster growth in markets that have historically suffered from low tele density but are now, with wireless data networks, offering application providers to a huge new customer base.

Internet traffic growth is largely driven by three things: the number of people connected, the minutes they spend using it every day and the bit intensity of the application they are using.

The pandemic brought a huge challenge to global networks, and only the internet of today, and the applications it enables, allowed the world to keep working.

If the pandemic had happened ten years ago, the effect on global productivity would have probably been catastrophic.

We are much further away from hitting the limits of what is possible in network access and speed than we are at hitting the limits of processor power and storage.

Moore’s Law isn’t so much a law than an observation

RTC NorthFormerly the Regional Technology Centre for the North East and Cumbria, RTC North was founded in 1987 by computer programmer Gordon Ollivere MBE. He started the business after seeing how desktop computing had the power to transform his client’s businesses by boosting productivity, driving innovation and creating new business models. Today, RTC delivers advisory services across the North of England, and each year its advisors work with more than 2000 small businesses.

To find out more, visit www. rtcnorth.co.uk by Intel founder and chief executive Gordon Moore, which says the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years.

Gordon Moore, the Intel founder and chief executive referenced in this article, died on March 25. He was 94.

This truism has resulted in 53 years of compounded 55 per cent price performance improvement in MIPS (millions of instructions per second).

That improvement, however, is starting to hit up against the limits of technology.

The other way to speed up computing is to increase clock speeds, but as that happens, we generate ever more heat, and we’re already seeing limitations in the ability to cool chips.

The other factor is where data resides; 25 years ago, 90 per cent of MIPS in the world were produced on a ‘Wintel’ platform.

Today, 90 per cent are produced on a mobile device.

The ability to move computing to the edge has reduced cost.

Growth and innovation will come from the mobile phone and the vast array of distributed devices on the edge of networks.

Ultimately, the internet allows small business to think global.

And if you haven’t started thinking about how you can leverage the internet and technology to increase the reach of your business, get on it.

Because there are 5.3 billion potential entrepreneurs out there – and one of them might just eat your lunch.