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Anchor Hanover CEO: ‘An ageing population is often described as a problem; we need to see the opportunities’
Last year’s merger of Anchor and Hanover created the largest specialist older people’s housing provider in the sector. Gavriel Hollander meets its boss – Jane Ashcroft – to hear about her plans for the future. Photography by Julian Anderson
Jane Ashcroft, chief executive of Anchor Hanover, has a bee in her bonnet about the way our society treats the issue of ageing.
“Having an older population is often described as a huge problem,” she tells Inside Housing. “We always hear about this ‘problem’ that we’re all living longer but that’s perverse if you think about it; it’s a good thing. We need to see the opportunities of ageing and not always the downside.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ms Ashcroft is an advocate of the benefits of our changing demographics. The organisation where she has spent the lion’s share of her professional life is the largest provider of housing for older people in the country.
Last year, that position as the biggest specialist housing association became even more secure when Anchor, where Ms Ashcroft had been chief executive since 2010, merged with Hanover. The newly combined association owns or manages 54,000 homes and employs more than 10,000 people.
“We always hear about this ‘problem’ that we’re all living longer but that’s perverse if you think about it; it’s a good thing. We need to see the opportunities of ageing and not always the downside”
It’s a perfect time for Inside Housing to meet Ms Ashcroft, with the organisation having just unveiled its first business plan as a combined entity. It outlines a development pipeline of 3,200 units over the next eight years, with at least a third earmarked for social housing. It will also look to add to its existing portfolio of residential care homes. When two large organisations merge, questions around cost savings and job cuts are inevitable, but Anchor Hanover’s aims are more about building on what is already there, according to the boss.
“It is about [our] ambition to do more because we recognise there’s such a demand for older people’s services,” continues Ms Ashcroft. “It’s about [creating] more opportunities for colleagues. We’ve got 10,500 people in our workforce; as a care organisation we need lots of great people. As long as there’s more development and more choice for customers, there are more opportunities for people to develop their careers.”
Developing and retaining talent is a challenge that those who work in the care sector are acutely aware of. A report from the Care Association Alliance earlier this year estimated that there could be a shortfall of half a million care workers by 2030. Ms Ashcroft says addressing this impending crisis is imperative and believes raising both the pay and profile for frontline staff is a good start.
“We’ve worked hard, despite the funding pressure, to be as good an employer as we can,” she says, adding that everyone at Anchor is paid above the National Living Wage.
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“Too often social care was seen as making people a cup of tea and having a chat. It isn’t that – that’s become better accepted. Anything we can do to raise the status of the social care workforce is a good thing.”
Ms Ashcroft’s own remuneration has been the subject of some controversy in the housing sector. Inside Housing’s 2018 chief executive salary survey found that she was the second-highest-paid housing association boss, pulling in £414,000 in 2017/18. Her salary as the boss of a registered charity has attracted the scrutiny of the press over the past few years – and not just in Inside Housing.
But she is relaxed when asked about this. “It goes with the territory,” she shrugs. “It’s a tiny issue.”
She says that, as a sector, housing associations are transparent and describes the remuneration process as “very appropriate”.
“Those decisions get made; my job is to deliver the business plan. That’s a really exciting thing to do,” she insists. “I have the best job in the sector. I love what I do and I work with amazing people.”
She believes that showing that well-paid, fulfilling careers can be forged in both care and housing is an important part of the picture: “This is a sector where people can build careers and we need role models through organisations. I want people to feel like they can build careers, ideally with Anchor Hanover, but certainly within the sector.”
Being a bigger organisation has other benefits besides simply being able to do more. Ms Ashcroft emphasises the increased “resilience” that the merger has fostered: “Social care is not a sector that’s awash with fabulous funding, and that has its own challenges. Our ability to flex when there are challenges in the housing sector or social care sector is a benefit of being a larger organisation.”
One of those challenges is how to pay for social care in an age of constrained public spending. The last year has seen the supported housing sector come under intense scrutiny, with the regulator issuing repeated warnings over the role of a particular model of lease-based private finance in the wake of the near-collapse of First Priority.
Ms Ashcroft is keen to stress that the majority of the small associations in the spotlight over these issues, such as First Priority, specialise in supported housing for people with mental health issues or disabilities, rather than older people. Nevertheless, the saga has brought to light the problem of how to fund a type of housing that is, by definition, more expensive than general needs.
“What we think of as the challenges for the sector are around the growing number of older people and the ability for older people to fund services in later life,” she explains.
“A significant proportion of people don’t recognise that they’ll have to contribute to their own care needs. When people use our services it’s a horrible surprise when they find out they are means tested and some will have to make a contribution. For us that’s a driver.”
Anchor Hanover has responded to the challenge by launching an initiative – Be Wise – to help tenants and leaseholders access benefits they may not have known were available to them. In six-and-a-half years, this has saved £10m for residents.
“It’s frustrating at a macro level that we are working in a system that everybody acknowledges is broken, and it’s frustrating at a micro level when families and older people are grappling with a system that doesn’t work for them”
Nationally, the funding conundrum was supposed to have been partly solved by the government’s Social Care Green Paper. But having been announced by chancellor Philip Hammond in the Budget two years ago, it has been subjected to a long series of delays. The government said last year that it will be published “at the first opportunity” in 2019, but there is deep scepticism among those who work in the sector.
“It’s frustrating at a macro level that we are working in a system that everybody acknowledges is broken, and it’s frustrating at a micro level when families and older people are grappling with a system that doesn’t work for them,” says Ms Ashcroft.
She suggests that funding the transition from one system to another could be the stumbling block, especially with uncertainty lingering over how much money will be available for public services post-Brexit.
“Successive governments have looked at this and agreed broadly that there has to be some kind of settlement about how much people can be expected to pay and some kind of cap on an individual’s exposure. There’s a fairly solid consensus, but the challenge is that any transition is always going to need funding through that transitional period.”
But Ms Ashcroft is an optimist. She says the delay – and the debate that has taken place over the past two years – has meant the role of housing in the social care picture “has become better understood”.
She adds: “Policymakers understand that helping to encourage housing for people in later life can have a significant impact on social care. I hope and expect the green paper will comment on that.”
Originally from Liverpool – “I’m fortunate I get a decent football team to support!” – Ms Ashcroft grew up in the South, went to university in Scotland and now lives in the Midlands. She says it makes her “a citizen of everywhere”. That mixed background applies to her professional career, which started at Bromford, before she left to work for a care company that was part of Bupa, and then joined Anchor in the late-1990s.
“I am rooted in both housing and care,” she says. “It makes a lot of sense to put them together.”
And she wants government to recognise that synergy, too.
“We had a campaign at Anchor to encourage ministerial responsibility about ageing and demographic change,” she recalls. “Every area of policy is affected by the changing shape of society, whether it’s about work or pensions, or care or housing. We need to get a grip on that and think about the policy levers that can be pulled to make it work for people.
“I’m not retiring until that happens.”
Retirement plans are Ms Ashcroft’s business. But with such big challenges still to overcome, it looks like she won’t be making plans of her own for some time.
