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About us

We are an independent local charity, promoting the well-being of older people and helping to make later life a more fulfilling and enjoyable experience. 

Area of Benefit

Our 'Area of Benefit' is defined as:

The civil parishes of East Grinstead Town, Ashurst Wood, West Hoathly and Worth, including the villages of Copthorne, Crawley Down, Turners Hill and Sharpthorne.  This broadly means that we cover these postcodes:

RH19 

  • East Grinstead
  • Ashurst Wood
  • West Hoathly
  • Sharpthorne

RH10 

  • Worth
  • Copthorne
  • Crawley Down
  • Furnace Wood
  • Domewood
  • Rowfant
  • Turners Hill

History

Age Concern East Grinstead became a company limited by guarantee on 8th September 2008. The assets of the original unincorporated association were transferred into the private limited company on 1 October 2009. 

We took over the Glen Vue Community Hub in May 2019 and moved from the Swan Mead Day Centre in the second week of June 2019.

The organisation is now known formerly as Age UK East Grinstead & District and is run by an Operations Manager, with a team of eight staff and about  forty volunteers. 

The organisation receives local authority funding from WSCC and MSDC to help support the services offered. The Chief Officer is responsible for the day-to-day running of the organisation and reports to a Board of Trustees who is ultimately responsible for the correct running of the organisation.

The Age UK Structure

All local Age UK services are independent charities and are not funded for their daily running costs by Age UK in London.  However, by joining the network of Age UK services, we do agree to abide by their ‘Brand Partnership’ guidelines.  Part of this is to work within the boundaries stipulated in our agreement – in the case of Age UK East Grinstead & District, this is defined as the civil parishes of East
Grinstead Town, Ashurst Wood, West Hoathly and Worth, including the villages of Copthorne, Crawley Down, Turners Hill and Sharpthorne.

Surrounding local Age UK services include:

  • Age UK East Sussex, which covers all parts of East Sussex, including Forest Row. (www.ageuk.org.uk/eastsussex)
  • Age UK Surrey, which covers areas close to East Grinstead, such as Felbridge and Lingfield.(www.ageuk.org.uk/surrey)
  • Age UK Horsham District, which covers this area within West Sussex.(www.ageuk.org.uk/horsham district)
  • Age UK West Sussex, which covers all parts of West Sussex outside East Grinstead and the surrounding rural areas (district), is run from Littlehampton and has local centres in Bognor Regis, Burgess Hill, Chichester, Crawley and Haywards Heath (www.ageuk.org.uk/westsussex)
  • In Kent, there is a network of local services but no county-wide organisation.

Age UK East Grinstead & District cannot therefore decide to operate services within Forest Row as this is the domain of another local Age UK (East Sussex). As we are at the junction of four counties, the same can be said of Lingfield/Felbridge and Age UK Surrey or Cowden and one of the network of Age UK local services in Kent.

Within the Age UK network itself, there are 2 categories of local services:

  • Services such as those mentioned above, which are ‘Brand Partners’.
  • Smaller and more local services, called ‘Friends’, which are linked to their nearest Brand Partner, such as Age Concern Hassocks.

When Age Concern merged with Help the Aged in 2009 to form Age UK, there were also some local services which decided instead to become independent. This is the case with, for example, Age Concern Eastbourne, which is a completely independent local service operating from a facility in the centre of Eastbourne.

Age UK East Grinstead & District is also funded by the County and District Councils within the area is inhabits, i.e., West Sussex County Council and Mid Sussex District Council. Because the remit of these councils is to support older people in their local area, they would not as our funders be happy for us to decide to provide an in-depth service outside this area in Kent, Surrey or East Sussex.

However, we do work closely with all the other Age UK services locally, and have a good working relationship specifically with our funders and with Age UK East Sussex, It has therefore been decided that we can:

  • Welcome older people who live outside our area into our centre and on our trips and outings, so long as they pay our annual membership fee of £30.00 and so long as we do not canvass for members from outside our area. This enables older people to have more choice and to access a variety of services to increase their quality of life.
  • Support carers of people living with dementia but who live outside our area into our Daybreak service, so long as their local GP is based in East Grinstead. This was agreed with the funders of that service.