Honorary Award for David Pickersgill

David Pickersgill is amongst leading figures from the worlds of entertainment, law, business and equality who have been presented with Honorary Doctorates from Leeds Metropolitan University.

David Pickersgill is a highly successful local businessman who has recently retired as the Deputy Chair of the Board of Governors of the University after being a member of the Board for the maximum ten-year period. Mr Pickersgill has a long history with the University, beginning with his own education in Mechanical Engineering at the then Leeds College of Technology.

Five years after leaving college, Mr Pickersgill formed a family partnership which expanded in the 1970s with the purchase of Joseph Kaye & Sons. Pickersgill-Kaye became incorporated and since then Mr Pickersgill and the company have worked to maintain a local partnership between education and industry, taking on placement students and becoming part of the first of Leeds Polytechnic’s Teaching Company Schemes.

His staunch support of the links between education and industry were recognised and in 1988 he was invited to become a member of the Leeds Polytechnic Board of Governors. Within a year, Mr Pickersgill was appointed Deputy Chair of Governors and Chair of several sub-committees of the Board.

The University’s School of Engineering in the Faculty of Information and Engineering Systems have also named a laboratory in honour of Mr Pickersgill in recognition of the many students his firm has taken on placement, including the current Managing Director of the company, Peter Murphy. The Pickersgill Laboratory provides students with the facilities to learn about robotic assembly cells and animatronics.

The awards were presented at a ceremony held at Leeds Civic Hall on May 27 1999.