Rockdale Appeal

We have completed another successful year's fundraising, and our thanks go to our Appeal Board and Patrons, and in particular to Sam Footitt, the Chairman of our Appeal Board, for all their hard work. This year Nadra Ahmed joined our patrons. She is well known in the care profession, where her career has spanned over 20 years, and she has been awarded an OBE for her services for older people.

At the end of the year our total raised stood at £860,407, including pledges. The Appeal was boosted by generous grants from the Clothworkers' Foundation, the Elise Pilkington Charitable Trust and the Garfield Weston Foundation.

An extremely busy year of events also contributed to this total, and we are tremendously grateful to all our kind supporters for their hard work. I would particularly like to highlight the spectacular opera evening so energetically organised by Andrew Bligh, Edward Oatley's intrepid sponsored bike ride to Vietnam and the enjoyable calendar girls evening organised by Rotary.

Development

During 2006 we have been investigating ways of achieving our main aim of rebuilding Rockdale House, and to that end, we have been talking to various developers about partnership agreements.

We have also been working on two further possible developments: a small scheme of leasehold flats behind Stable Court which we are calling Summerbank, and the conversion of the old Rockdale House into further leasehold flats. I am pleased to report that at the end of 2006 we got planning permission for Summerbank.

No decisions have yet been taken on these developments, but we hope to do so in the coming months.

Rockdale House

Regular events in Rockdale House continued: keep fit, film afternoons, reflexology, aromatherapy, the Wednesday shop, church services and poetry and art groups all thrived. In addition, other activities have included visiting clothes sales, a when-we-were-younger photo competition, quizzes, the Queen's birthday celebrations, Mrs Brown Douglas's 100th birthday party, and a successful outing to Eagle Heights. A family party was much enjoyed at Christmas.

Three members of Rockdale House staff completed their NVQ 3 in Care, and Lesley Ship (the Deputy Home Manager) completed her Registered Manager’s Award. We are required to have 50% of care staff at (or working towards) NVQ 2 or above and I am pleased to report that we have 15 out of 23 (over 65%) who have completed level 3 or above.

Rockdale House continues to be in demand, and vacancies are quickly filled.

The Sheltered Apartments

In the light of government policies, work began this year on creating our own choice based lettings scheme, in advance of the multi authority scheme which is being developed by Sevenoaks District Council. Although Rockdale’s aim of housing older people who have housing, medical, social or financial needs will continue to be the central focus of our lettings policy, the actual process will be simplified and control over the choice of apartment will be passed to the applicant.

Under the new scheme, once applicants have been assessed by Rockdale as falling into one of four priority bands - A, B, C or D, they will be advised of any vacancies as soon as they become available. At this stage they may choose whether they wish to ‘bid’ for a particular property. Once the closing date for ‘bids’ has been reached, the applicant in the highest priority band who has been waiting for the longest period of time will be invited to take the tenancy or start the buying process for a leasehold apartment.

For those who choose not to ‘bid’, there will be no penalties. They may wait until an apartment which suits them becomes available, whether it is in a particular location on the site, has a separate bedroom or is close to someone they already know.

We are grateful to our Housing Manager for obtaining a grant from the Centre for Sheltered Housing Studies to conduct a research project on attitudes and use of computers in sheltered housing. The old hobbies room in Beatrice Wilson Flats has been converted into a computer suite, and an astonishing 44 residents signed up to learn about using computers. The numbers have settled down to a steady 25, and the computer club thrives, with many residents now researching their family trees and becoming active ‘silver surfers’.

As part of our planned maintenance programme for the year, eight kitchens and one bathroom were replaced. To avoid too much disruption to residents, we usually wait until flats become vacant to do this work, but the residents of two flats asked for their kitchens to be included in the programme this year. In both cases the residents were able to choose from a range of different units and pick the colour scheme, and in one kitchen the resident helped us to design the layout.

External decorations were carried out at Beatrice Wilson, Stable Court, Webbs Meadow and Constant Meadow. After discussions with the fire department, we were able to install a stair lift in the third block of apartments at Webbs Meadow, and now all first floor apartments in Akehurst Lane are served either by lifts or stair lifts.

Finance

The accounts for 2006 show an increase in our operating deficit from £30,715 to £125,656. The increase is mainly due to an increase in our planned maintenance expenditure of around £58,000 (for which we make provision in our designated reserves) and the ending by the government of Supported Housing Management Grant which finished in February.

During the year we commissioned specialist consultants to examine our rents, support and service charges to ensure that they are correctly apportioned and levied and that they attract the optimum amount of government funding. The outcome of this review was that service charges have been increased, and our revenue should be on a sounder footing in 2007.

Committee Membership

In January we were pleased to welcome Sam Footitt and Tim Child to the Management Committee. Tim brings a wealth of business experience to the Committee, and valuable experience as Vice Chairman of a homelessness charity in London. Sam has been serving as Chairman of the Appeal Board since 2003, and has a particular interest in Rockdale House as his mother was a resident there. He spent his career as a finance executive with the Royal Dutch Shell Group, and is now a non-executive director of several UK and USA companies.

Marion Ansell joined the committee in July. Marion lives in Underriver and has recently retired from the Macmillan Nursing Service. She has been appointed to the Care and Selection Sub Committee, which we know we will benefit tremendously from her skills.

Janet Nalder retired at the AGM, having served on the Management Committee for over ten years, where we will miss her common sense and practical approach to problems. We are very grateful that Janet will be staying on the Care and Selection Sub Committee, and continuing to run the weekly Rockdale House shop, which has flourished under her control.

Conclusion

I am completing four years as chairman in May and standing down from the committee. I am grateful to have held this post through such interesting and challenging times. I hope that I leave the association in good health and on the brink of major developments of great value to the community.

In all our work I have been grateful for the support of the Management Committee and particularly my Deputy Chairman, Dr Pamela Dunn, and Dick Richards who headed our financial sub-committee.

We are fortunate to have such dedicated and expert staff as we tackle a world with ever more regulations and official bodies, while never forgetting that we exist to serve the community and our residents.

In the certainty of missing out many people who have made a valuable contribution, I would like to thank Jill Griffiths, our Chief Executive, and “the office” and all concerned with the flats and grounds and Gilli Crick and all at the House. The appeal has depended on Sam Foottit and his committee and the appeal office set up by Jennifer Medd and now carried forward by Roland Courtney and Lynn Tier.

Thank you to all concerned.