Sir Peter Rigby graces Private Eye pages

Millionaire owner of integrator SCC featured in magazine's Rotten Boroughs over his battle with Warwick District Council

Serial entrepreneur Sir Peter Rigby made the pages of satirical magazine Private Eye this week as his attempts to develop a local airport and create thousands of jobs repeatedly come up against protestors.

Featuring in the Rotten Boroughs section of the magazine, it detailed the SCC founder’s continued battle with his Coventry Gateway scheme, which will create a major new technology and manufacturing/distribution park on land around Coventry airport.

An application has been recently re-submitted to Warwick District Council by the Coventry & Warwickshire Development Partnership and is seeking permission to build on two areas of land totalling 300 hectares (741 acres).

When completed, the scheme will create up to 10,000 new jobs. Additional work to the roads in the area, providing access to existing employment land with Coventry city will also create a further 4,000 jobs, the application stated.

However, the plans, which were originally unveiled last year, have come up against steep local opposition.

A report from local paper Coventry Telegraph in December described how more than 150 opponents attended a council meeting at Leamington Town Hall calling the plans a "five-card trick" and a "Trojan horse for airport development".

Due to the level of protest, the council released a statement saying it will be "closely examining" all the information and is consulting widely on the plans, with the aim of compiling a report on the application "before the end of the year".

Aside from his airport plans, Rigby owns a string of luxury hotels and Integrator SCC. He last hit the channel headlines when he offloaded distribution arm SDG to Tech Data for about £219m.

CRN is awaiting a comment from Sir Peter.