Path to success: ideas, devotion and a good walk

Yvonne Lee (centre) with Brodwen Hamer (retail manager, left) and Kathryn Hamer (shop manager) at the Age Concern shop in Failsworth

Martyn Meets . . . Yvonne Lee, chief executive of Age Concern Oldham
YVONNE Lee has travelled a long road to become chief executive of an Oldham charity that generates a turnover of £2 million, employs 80 full and part-time staff and manages 250 active volunteers.

And I don’t just mean her daily walk to work at Age Concern’s offices in Church Street, in the shadow of the parish church, from her home in Garden Suburb.

It is a walk this formidable lady contemplates with joy in her heart every morning — except when it’s raining — for, like the team at Age Concern, she enjoys every minute of every day of her job.

“No one joins us because of the salaries, believe me, everyone involved does it because they care and they have passion for working with the older people of Oldham,” she declares with a look of steely determination that suggests I should not challenge this statement.

Not that I would. As a trustee of this organisation for the past seven years, I know full well the work the charity does across the borough and the remarkable challenges undertaken by the staff and army of voluntary helpers each and every day.

Volunteering is at the heart of Yvonne’s involvement with the charity, which is in the throes of change as it contemplates becoming an independent part of the Age UK federation, an association of autonomous charities with a single aim — to work for the benefit of the old and vulnerable in society.

In Oldham this includes a host of services including day centres, luncheon clubs, a shopping service for housebound people, information advocates and a veritable raft of others including a popular monthly tea dance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Oldham.

And it is all funded through revenue raised by the trading arm which embraces retail outlets in Uppermill, Lees, Hollins and Shaw, plus Failsworth, where there is also a furniture outlet.

Throw in two vintage-retro businesses, one in George Street close to the town centre, a community cafe in Failsworth from where the AC Outside Catering business is run, a busy insurance business plus service agreements with Oldham Council and you begin to get the picture.

Income generation is so successful that Oldham is ranked seventh out of 26 Age Concern branches in the region.

“We don’t shake cans anymore,” she smiles, teasingly.

It is all a far cry from the day 20 years ago when Yvonne joined the organisation on a part-time basis to manage the recruitment of volunteers.

Initially she turned down the job but was persuaded to think again when told she could do most of her work from home, which meant she had more time with her family, husband, Edward, and children Caroline and Alexander.

In those long-ago days the charity had one shop, in Abbeyhills Road, which Yvonne promptly closed — the first of many decisions which have shaped Age Concern Oldham into the organisation it is today.

“I had an idea that it wasn’t working too well so I closed it down. No one said anything, I just did it,” she recalls and to this day Yvonne is still ‘having ideas’.

There’s many a day, on her walk from Garden Suburb, when she will arrive in the office and announce to the staff “I’ve had an idea!”, at which most collapse or scurry for cover.

For Yvonne is brimful of ideas to drive forward the organisation and she is a long way from being finished yet.

One of her more ambitious ventures is about to come to fruition, the conversion of the former George Street Chapel into a heritage centre which will host events.

Heritage Lottery Funding of £50,000 has been secured for fees and architects’ work and this should eventually lead to a £600,000 grant to complete this impressive project.

Away from work, Yvonne and Edward enjoy time at their getaway cottage in Silverdale, but the lure of her job is a strong pull to return to her roots.

And these are firmly embedded in Oldham. Born in Coldhurst, she attended the local primary school before sitting an examination “with hundreds of other girls” that won her a scholarship, one of only four awarded, to Hulme Grammar School.

No one in the family had attended a grammar school and finding money for the uniform proved a financial challenge.

Yvonne has vivid memories of her first day at Hulme. “There were 35 of us girls in the class and on the first day the teacher asked us all to stand and state our father’s profession.

“Well, there were architects and accountants and solicitors, you can just imagine, after all this was Hulme Grammar. And then it came my turn. I proudly told them my father was a spinning overlooker in the mill and most of the girls didn’t even know what one was!.

“To this day I wonder why they ever did that.”

Yvonne made friendships in those five years at Hulme which survive to this day, and one girl became her bridesmaid when she married Edward.

But there was no sixth form for her — at 16 she left and joined the civil service, “a real aspiration in those days”, working from offices under the clock at Asa Lees in Huddersfield Road.

Along came Caroline so, like all women of that era, she stopped working, eventually returning to work part-time with Age Concern after the birth of their second child.

She worked her way through the ranks and 10 years ago accepted an invitation from the trustees to take over as chief executive.

During the decade since she has overseen, with staff colleagues she describes as “devoted to their jobs and outstanding people”, Age Concern’s rise to its position today where it affects the lives of thousands of people. All in Oldham.

And still she walks to work, despite owning a Jaguar. Well, husband Edward does own a garage.

Her morning constitution takes her past an old gentlemen who leans on his garden gate and converses with passers-by. He knows Yvonne works for Age Concern, but that’s about the extent of his knowledge.

“One day, as I was scurrying along in the rain, I just do not do wet hair and I almost turned back for the car, the old gentlemen said ever so gently, ‘You know love, have you ever thought of getting a better job and saving up to buy a little car?’”

Thousands of people across Oldham will fervently hope that day never dawns.