What can Greater Manchester and Southwark learn from each other about growing older well? On 23 October 2026 we brought both places together at Appleby Blue to find out.
The day
We hosted colleagues from Greater Manchester at Appleby Blue, our Stirling Prize-winning almshouse in Bermondsey, alongside people from across Southwark’s council, health, voluntary and academic sectors, the Greater London Authority, housing providers and Appleby Blue residents.
The day followed five steps:
- LearnHow Greater Manchester built its age-friendly approach
- SeeA tour of Appleby Blue, including a resident’s flat
- ConnectA working lunch on mixed Southwark and Manchester tables
- DiscussA fishbowl on place-based approaches to ageing well
- CreateWriting down what we want to happen next
In the fishbowl, residents of Appleby Blue told us what works for them, including the importance of transport links and community activities, and the room discussed how to reach more older people who might not be immediately interested in co-production.
Our side: the Appleby Blue model and the tour
Alison Benzimra, our Director of Strategy & Operations, opened the day by introducing United St Saviour’s and why we brought the people in the room together. Founded in 1541, the charity provides affordable homes for older people on low incomes across three almshouses, funded by a historic property portfolio. Through our Community Investment Programme and One Southwark, we work with local organisations and residents to build equity, champion prevention and empower community groups.
She then set out the Appleby Blue model, which has three parts: design quality, a resident support model and community integration.
- 57homes at Appleby Blue
- 65residents
- 100+bedrooms freed up in the wider housing market
Many residents moved from council or private rented homes. Appleby Blue was built on the site of a former council care home through a partnership between the charity, Southwark Council and JTRE London, funded through a Section 106 agreement.
The presentation also covered how our approach is grounded in research, with the Vivensa Foundation, and the need to look beyond the front door, across all eight domains of an age-friendly city, from transport to civic participation. It touched on our work on LGBTQ+ inclusion, on connecting housing with care, and on providing more homes.
After Manchester’s presentations, guests toured Appleby Blue in two groups, each a mix of Southwark and Manchester visitors, including a visit to a resident’s flat.
What Greater Manchester shared
The case for acting is clear. In Greater Manchester:
- 1 in 3residents is now over 50
- 34%projected growth in the over-75 population by 2045
- 250,000people over 50 live alone
Figures from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
Five things stood out about how the region has responded.
- 1Age-friendly work is a long game. Ageing policy in Greater Manchester stretches from public health initiatives in the 1990s, through the Valuing Older People programme in 2003 and founder membership of the WHO Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities in 2007, to the creation of the combined authority and its Ageing Hub in 2016 and a second age-friendly strategy for 2024 to 2034. Consistent leadership over that time has meant, in the words of one presenter, an ally in every room.
- 2It is an ecosystem, not a single programme. Public bodies, housing providers, architects, universities, the NHS and older people’s networks work towards a shared mission. The starting point is that the marginalisation of older people is not an individual weakness but the product of systemic factors, so the answer lies in changing the relationships between institutions and residents.
- 3Design guidance is shared and practical. The Greater Manchester Age-Friendly Design Group brings together policymakers, academics, designers, developers and older people, convened by the Ageing Hub, with the aim of improving the quality and quantity of homes for older people. Its guide, Creating Age-Friendly Developments, gives developers, planners and architects 62 prompts to work through. The Hub has also put an ageing lens on the region’s Housing First priorities, including a rightsizing framework.
- 4Older people are partners in the research. The Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group works with older people, policy makers, practitioners and community organisations. Its Older People’s Forum developed a code of practice for working together that starts with involvement from the beginning and building trust.
- 5Inclusion can be designed in. Kindred House is an 80-apartment extra care scheme for people over 55 on social rent, with an LGBTQ+ majority, developed by the LGBT Foundation, Great Places Housing Group and Manchester City Council with a community steering group.
Manchester’s own summary of the lessons: make action match the implications of an ageing society, work across sectors and with older people directly, coalesce around a shared vision, win hearts and minds over time, and remember that solutions need creativity, not just compliance.
What the room told us
At the end of the day, people wrote down what they wanted to happen next. The result was twelve actions to take and seven ideas to explore, which fall into five themes.
Actions to take
- Spread the Appleby model. Promote the Appleby model for housing, share the learning, create more knowledge-sharing opportunities and visits to exemplar properties elsewhere, and understand the business model and costs of Appleby Blue and what they mean for future projects.
- Build the evidence. Research that documents the evidence of need at the start and the impact later on.
- Tell the story. Social media campaigns, and a continued national media campaign following the Stirling Prize to communicate the positive benefits of the model.
- Work in partnership. Collaborate, not compete. Work through partnerships rather than approaching GPs and similar services one by one. Explore an effective Southwark or South London Ageing Hub.
- Influence policy and place. Use political influence and lobbying for more of this, and re-purpose high streets for urban living choices.
Ideas to explore
- How to ensure housing is considered under health
- Presenting older people’s housing as making economic sense
- Interactions between the GLA and Southwark, and helping them see the benefits
- The private rental market
- More options to facilitate rightsizing
- Resident input into future developments: what works well, and what could be improved?
- What the next generation of older people might want
Creating more spaces to collaborate
Above all, events that bring people together across different place-based approaches help us avoid working in silos, share knowledge to improve outcomes and create a better way to age well in our cities.
Thank you to everyone who came, especially our r
Residents and the colleagues who travelled from Greater Manchester to share what they have learned.