The National Computing Centre (NCC) was an independent not-for-profit membership and research organisation in the United Kingdom. After the original organisation was liquidated in 2010, Redholt Limited changed its name to the National Computing Centre Limited (NCC Ltd) and acquired the assets of the original NCC through a pre-pack administration arrangement. This new for-profit company, formed in 2010, initially offered some of the same services as the original NCC but in 2012 became a shell company as it had to file for protection from its creditors and make most of its staff redundant. Formation and early years The National Computing Centre was founded on 10 June 1966 by the Labour government, as an autonomous not-for-profit organisation, in order to be the "voice of the computer user", encourage the growth of computer usage in the UK and ensure that the necessary education and training was made available. NCC was one of the visible outcomes from Harold Wilson's "White Heat of Technology" speech and the formation of a Ministry of Technology, the others being the computer company International Computers Limited (ICL) and chip maker Inmos (both now defunct). Initially, most income came directly from government grants, but with the growth of NCC's commercial operations this ceased in 1989. During the 1970s and 1980s NCC had a joint venture with Blackwell Publishing (NCC Blackwell) which was a significant publisher of academic computing books. Between 1989 and 1996 NCC operated with five main divisions – education, consulting, escrow, membership services, and system engineering deriving income from membership fees and its commercial activities. A valued component was the Computer Validation Service, which ran Validation testing for Fortran 77 and Pascal. These validation tests were issued in accordance with a reciprocal agreement with General Services Administration in the United States. NCC Education In 1996, the National Computing Centre sold its overseas education business, NCC Education, to stave off a financial crisis that occurred when the company breached its borrowing limits. MBO, NCC Services Ltd and NCC Group plc In 1999, it sold its commercial divisions (turnover of less than £10 million), which provided escrow, consultancy, system engineering services to its existing management team supported by ECI Ventures for £5 million. This new company was named NCC Services Limited and later became NCC Group Limited of which the National Computing Centre held a 20% share. John Perkins became the new managing director of National Computing Centre, which