Baroness Sally Greengross OBE, who died June 2022 aged 86, served as director general of Age Concern England (now part of Age UK) from 1987 until 2000 and took it from a small organisation to Britain’s biggest charity for older people, campaigning tirelessly to push their rights up the political agenda. 

 

Sally raised the profile of age discrimination, poverty, winter deaths, poor health, quality of care. She also carried out much research herself into issues such as the value of grandparenting, kinship and intergenerational relationships.

 

Greengross was an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords and co-chaired five All-Party Parliamentary Groups: Dementia, Corporate Social Responsibility, Bladder and Bowel Continence Care, Social Care and Ageing and Older People. 

 

She was the Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Choice at the End of Life and Longevity, and was the Treasurer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Equalities. 

 

She was also Chair of the cross-party Intergenerational Fairness Forum. In December 2006, it was announced that she would be a Commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. 

 

In 1997 she established the International Longevity Centre UK, a think tank to produce expert analysis into the consequences of an ageing population for government, public services and industry, but also as a celebration of an active long life. 

 

The Greengross Foundation intends to deliver on her final campaign idea to ask the big question of people and organisations. ‘What does age irrelevance look like … and how do we achieve it’