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People
Nigel Appleton
Nigel Appleton is Principal of Contact Consulting, a specialist research and consultancy business he established in 1995. The focus of his work is at the intersection of health, housing and social care; with a particular interest in the housing and care needs of older people and in services to enhance the independence and quality of life of disabled people and other vulnerable adults.
Nigel’s expertise and experience covers a wide range of topics within this field:
Support for the development of strategies to meet the future housing and care needs. Nigel served as Expert Advisor to the Social Justice and Regeneration Committee of the Welsh Assembly in its review of housing and care policies in relation to older people in Wales. He has also led reviews for around thirty different local authorities, many in collaboration with health partners, of their strategies for accommodation and care for older people, and is the author of “More Choice, Greater Voice: a toolkit for producing a strategy for accommodation with care for older people” Communities and Local Government/Care Service Partnership, 2008, which distils and disseminates that experience.
Nigel is acknowledged as an expert in Home Improvement Agencies, in Equity Release and generally in work with owner-occupiers. His publications in this area include: “Planning for the Needs of the Majority – the needs and aspirations of older people in general housing” and “Ready Steady, but not quite go – older homeowners and equity release”, both for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Nigel led the team that carried out research and drafted the materials for the joint Good Practice guidance on delivering adaptations, published by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills. He was a member of the external reference group for the Integrating Community Equipment Services initiative at the Department of Health. Contact Consulting has carried out a large number of reviews of adaptation and equipment services for local authorities. He is currently engaged in work, commissioned jointly by CSIP, the Housing Corporation and the National Housing Federation to support the delivery of housing strategies to meet the needs of vulnerable adults.
In the field of specialised accommodation for older people Nigel combines strategic work for local commissioners with preparing guidance for central government and practical assignments for statutory, voluntary and commercial providers. For the Change Agent Team at the Department of Health he has written two key guides: “An introduction to Extracare housing for commissioners” and “Achieving Success in Developing Extra Care housing”, together with a number of Briefing Papers on particular aspects of Extra Care provision. He has undertaken a number of assignments supporting the business development activity of the ExtraCare Charitable Trust, including writing, with Martin Shreeve, “Now for something different - the ExtraCare Charitable Trust’s approach to retirement living”. The Department of Health has funded his role as “trouble-shooter” in relation to a number of Extra Care schemes they have funded where difficulties have arisen in bringing schemes to completion.
Nigel has reviewed a large number of individual sheltered housing schemes for local authorities and for Registered Social Landlords, relating the issues arising from a review of sheltered stock to the strategic ambitions of the authority in the wider field of older persons’ accommodation and care.
Prior to establishing his consultancy in 1995 Nigel was Director of Anchor Housing Trust. He is a trustee of Help and Care, Bournemouth, Vice Chair of the Centre for Policy on Ageing and has been an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Birmingham University. In the more distant past he was a member of the Governing Body of Age Concern England and a Board Member of Fold Housing Group, Northern Ireland.