Lancashire is home to a thriving mix of digital, tech, and creative businesses, with a growing number of companies scaling up and innovating across the county. But ensuring the region’s workforce is ready to meet the demands of tomorrow remains a core focus for local leaders.
That was one of the key themes at Prolific North’s roundtable on 12 November, hosted in association with Forbes Solicitors, where senior digital and tech figures discussed how people, skills, and investment will underpin Lancashire’s continued growth.
While the first part of our coverage yesterday focused on the region’s identity and infrastructure , this final part of the debate turned to the lifeblood of that vision, addressing the challenges and opportunities with people, skills, and investment.
‘You can build a great business here’
Lancashire’s ‘quality’ talent pool was widely praised at the morning event, thanks to its blend of experienced digital and tech talent with graduates emerging from top local universities from University of Lancashire, Lancaster University to Edge Hill University.
From established digital agencies in Lancaster, major brands like Silentnight, to leading tech firms across East Lancashire, the county is also home to a growing business community that is more than just competing with other regions, according to Rory Southworth (Fhunded).
“The great thing about Lancashire is it attracts a lot of people — you don’t have to go to the cities, you can build a great business here,” said Simon Couchman (ICG). “But that doesn’t mean everyone promotes themselves as ‘Lancashire-based’, it just happens to be where we are.”
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Except for two, “all of our tech team are Lancastrians and our CTO is from Blackpool,” added Ben Hookway (Relative Insight).
Although Lancashire has a “major appeal” particularly to professionals returning later in life thanks to its affordability and rural lifestyle, the region still struggles to retain younger homegrown talent and graduates, with several leaders suggesting the region’s limited nightlife is partly to blame.
Tom Grattan (EXP) added that his brand and digital consultancy has ‘never struggled’ to find talent in Lancaster, though marketing roles are easier to fill than design positions, given the courses offered by local universities.“We tend to get more people aged 30-plus who’ve studied elsewhere and then come back because they want a house and stability. They’re brilliant, but they’re also senior — and that’s potentially more costly because they’re further down in their career.”
In an effort to retain more young talent, agencies like 21 Digital have taken matters into their own hands by creating their own academies, said Sam Fletcher.
For Lee Petts (Fifty2M), he argued that Lancashire has had a “net migration problem for a long time.” He added: “More people leave than come here. If we want to attract or retain people, we need a stronger answer to the question: ‘Why live here?’”
Having a “better profile of the county” and promoting it more could attract more people to choose to live and work in Lancashire and that would “follow through the generations,” explained Grattan (EXP).
Commercial skills and the battle for top talent
A recurring theme was the big opportunity for closer collaboration between education and industry — and a sharper focus on commercial skills, not just technical ability.“ We talk a lot about technical skills, which is fair, but there’s nowhere near enough focus on commercial skills in the world we’re living in now,” argued Hookway (Relative Insight), who leads an AI-driven customer intelligence platform.
“With Lancashire’s density problem, talent isn’t concentrated in one place, so universities need to play a much bigger role. Whether you’re teaching marketing at one of the universities or spinning out new software, the pace of change in the market means you can’t keep doing things the old way.”
Petts (Fifty2M) said there is an opportunity to equip graduates with “work readiness skills”. He added: “We’re producing all of this talent but they’re not commercially minded. Everything we do is really commercially focused but people don’t get taught that in marketing degrees. Instead, they focus on the theory of marketing but not how to translate that into meaningful commercial outcomes.”
That disconnect is not purely a university issue, nor is it unique to Lancashire. On the “skills gap,” Nathaniel Cassidy (3manfactory), said: “If we want long-term change, interventions can’t start at universities. They need to begin in primary schools and follow through into secondary schools and colleges.”
From a creative perspective, Couchman (ICG) said there’s continuous learning and R&D at every stage of someone’s career at his agency to keep up with the pace of change.
With major employers across the county, from EDF Energy to BAE Systems, the conversation turned to the role that the “top tier one supply chain players” have in managing talent in the region.
“How can the bigger employers of the region do more in terms of having better graduate recruitment programmes and apprenticeship recruitment,” asked Dan Knowles (Lancashire Digital Hub). “We need to look at the opportunities around defence, energy and security as examples, how do we use that to drive infrastructure and opportunities for people.”
Petts (Fifty2M) said there is a “real concern” that big employers paying top salaries can drain tech talent and digital talent away from smaller firms unable to compete. But there is some progress being made as new “bootcamp” schemes are being introduced to build specialist defence and data skills.
The AI effect and the road ahead
Much of the debate inevitably turned to the impact of emerging technologies, the rapid rise of AI, and how it’s transforming both business models and skills needs.
Rob Ellis (Two Stories) said: “Senior developers are telling me they’re not seeing those junior developer roles coming through anymore because AI is doing so much of that work. Universities are already struggling to keep up with how fast things are changing.”
“If AI has the impact many believe then soft skills around problem solving, critical thinking, communication, empathy, understanding, interrogating information, and decision-making are going to become essential and these are skills we still talk about being absent in recent graduates – not their fault obviously, but a failing of the education system,” explained Cassidy (3manfactory).
For Fletcher (21 Digital), the focus should be on adapting: “We’ve embraced AI as an agency, we’re the people our clients turn to for research and insight. But for young people, the safest jobs now seem to be in trades and engineering. We need to help them see where the opportunities really are. For us, paid media has been our biggest growth area — and there’s a major skills shortage there.”
Tom Grattan (EXP) said his business has also embraced AI and agreed that while it can be transformative, it isn’t a substitute for talent: “It’s only as good as what you put in — but you’ve still got to understand how to use it and someone still needs to interpret and act on the insights.”
AI “isn’t going to create your voice” or your USP, said Couchman (ICG). He added: “You don’t want your pitch deck to look the same as everyone else’s because you used the same tool. You need that human creativity.”
“People tend to overestimate the short-term impact of AI but massively underestimate its long-term impact,” said Ben Hookway (Relative Insight). From a policy perspective, although supporting software and AI-driven companies might grow the local economy, he questioned whether it would deliver the jobs needed for the region.
It’s the “big challenge” for policymakers everywhere, said Knowles (Lancashire Digital Hub). In Lancaster for instance, creative and digital talent is emerging from nearby universities and innovation clusters naturally attract that talent and investment across places like Fraser House. The challenge is making sure the towns outside of these hubs are “not left behind”.
While AI is opening up new opportunities, several business leaders said that growth won’t necessarily translate into a hiring boom.
“Next year we’ll probably look to consolidate rather than expand,” said Ellis (Two Stories). “We’ll look to improve our profit or to improve our turnover through our processes.”
Similarly, Grattan (EXP) said: “Our revenue is up and our headcount hasn’t massively increased to warrant the revenue increase. It’s a difference in the type of client we’re working with, but there is a demand for agencies and what they’re doing. It’s just that we’re working in smarter, more efficient ways.”
Today, small agencies in places like Lancaster can now secure major clients without the need for 100-strong teams, added Ellis (Two Stories). A few years ago, this “simply wouldn’t have been possible.”
Wrapping up the conversation, Couchman (ICG) also agreed that progression doesn’t always mean boosting headcount. But bringing in young talent, whether they are graduates or apprentices, can help bring in “fresh ways of thinking” for creative businesses. Although “confidence is low, we want to grow”, he said, adding that businesses in Lancashire shouldn’t be afraid of looking outwards for clients. For his business, he’s now looking to the likes of Europe and Ireland.
“We’re confident in our business, our case studies and work that we’ve done. Getting work is not the issue. The issue is, how do we create really creative, dynamic, hard-working teams that love Lancashire as a place to be based?”
That message, echoed across the table, was clear: Lancashire’s growth won’t come from technology or infrastructure alone. It will come from its people and the long-term investment, consistency, and belief needed to help them thrive.
