The Centre for Ageing Better is calling on the government to appoint an Older People’s Commissioner for England.

The Centre for Ageing Better is calling on the government to appoint an Older People’s Commissioner for England to protect and promote the rights of older people and to help make England a better place to grow old in. They believe that Society needs a stronger voice to hold the government to account and to counter the ageism that is at the heart of many issues faced by people as they grow older.

This follows the release of the Centre Of Ageing Better’s annual State Of Ageing report 2022 which shows that England is becoming an increasingly challenging country to grow old in, with rising pensioner poverty and poorer health outcomes. The comprehensive review of national data on ageing makes clear, a financially secure and healthy later life is becoming increasingly unlikely for millions of people.

The report demonstrates the huge challenges facing the government’s levelling up ambitions to reduce inequalities across England as well as its stated commitment to increase healthy life expectancy by five years.

Whilst the Centre for Ageing Better makes detailed recommendations in each chapter covering health, housing, work and communities they have made 3 key recommendations.

3 Key Recommendations

1. The appointment of an Older People’s Commissioner for England with statutory powers to protect and champion older people.
2. A cross-departmental strategy is needed to coordinate government activity and funding to address the ageing population and level up the dramatic and growing inequality in the way we experience later life.
3. The collection of national data needs to expand and become sufficiently robust so the experiences of different groups can be more clearly understood, and ethnicity data reporting must be mandatory in all official and statutory statistics and data monitoring.

The Centre for Ageing Better believe this will give older people a stronger voice and help hold the government to account and to counter the ageism that is at the heart of many issues faced people as they grow older.