Peter Vardy (businessman)

In 1989, Vardy responded to a request from Kenneth Baker and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to build one of the first City Technology Colleges. A flagship initiative enlisting business people to work with educationists to raise educational standards in areas where educational standards were poor. He sponsored the building of a City Technology College in Gateshead, and subsequently under the Tony Blair initiative sponsored a further three Academies, in Middlesbrough, Thorne and Blyth.

These four schools form the Emmanuel Schools Foundation,[14] a coalition of schools with a Christian ethos based in the north of England. All of the schools have received Ofsted ratings from "good" to "outstanding". In October 2010, Vardy transferred sponsorship of the schools to the United Learning Trust, another sponsor of academies who operate over thirty schools nationwide.

Also, Sir Peter has begun to support homeless people, who through alcohol and drug misuse or on leaving custodial sentences find themselves without a home.[15] The Vardy Foundation is partnering with Betel International[16] who operate homes in over 24 countries across the world and have twenty five years' experience in this work.[17]

The Foundation plans to support three centres in the north east providing a home, meaningful work and somewhere to belong. The first opened in Hexham in September 2011[18] and the second is a women's house opening in 2017.

He is a director in the Durham and Tees Valley Community Rehabilitation Company[19] which has set up a charity called ARCC[20] to fulfil the probation service work in the north east.

After seeing the distress caused by the breakdown in families in the United Kingdom, Vardy set about finding a solution to the major problem. He visited Chicago in 2011 and was introduced to Dr Dave Anderson of Safe Families for Children,[21] an established charity in the United States, which has helped reduce the number of children going into state care by almost 50%.

He established Safe Families for Children[22] in the United Kingdom in 2012[23] and, by using volunteers has seen the charity develop throughout England working with 31 local authorities and seeing reductions of up to 17.5% in the first years of operation. His vision is to have volunteers in all towns and cities and see a significant reduction on the 70,000 children currently being taken into care.