My father, Alan Kilburn, who has died aged 89, was an influential figure in the social housing sector. Under his leadership in the 1980s the housing association North Housing undertook a series of major regenerative projects, including the renovation of several Georgian and Victorian terraces in Newcastle upon Tyne. Throughout, Alan always insisted to tenants that they lived in “our house, but your home”.
He also served as president of the Chartered Institute of Housing in 1982-83, and was a participant in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Inquiry into British Housing (1985), later introducing Prince Philip to tenants at Deckham in Gateshead.
The 80s also saw the drastic reduction of government grants to housing associations. When faced with a seemingly insurmountable barrier, Alan’s response was “we will find a way”. He pioneered the use of private finance to support social housing, raising £65m for North on the money markets and carefully attracting long-term investors who could make the scheme viable. He subsequently expanded North beyond its roots in the north-east of England and Cumbria, changing its name to Home in 1995.
Alan was appointed OBE in 1990. He retired in 1998, but remained active as a non-executive director of the commercial housebuilder Barratt, the North of England Civic Trust, the Northern Rock Foundation and the international Centre for Life. From 2003 to 2010 he was chair of the housing association William Sutton Trust, subsequently Affinity Sutton. He was one of the founders of Azure, a charity established at Cramlington, Northumberland, to provide training and employment opportunities for people with disabilities, retiring as its vice-chair only in 2022.
Alan was born in Old Shotton, County Durham, the eldest of the three children of Eddie, a labourer and later a stableman with East Durham Co-operative Dairies, and Ethel (nee Doidge), a housekeeper and cleaner. He grew up in the lodge of Shotton Hall, a house with few amenities, and attended Wellfield AJ Dawson grammar school in nearby Wingate.
At the end of 1952 he joined the development corporation building the new town of Peterlee, and the next year began training in housing management.
From 1963 he was successively housing manager at Ashington, Knottingley and Felling urban district councils, before joining Newcastle upon Tyne city council as assistant director of housing in 1969. In 1973 he moved to North British Housing Association, but in 1974 went south to Nottingham as its deputy director of housing.
In 1976 Alan returned to Newcastle as chief executive of the North Eastern Housing Association and its sister organisation North Housing Group. In 1980 the two merged to form North Housing, then the largest housing association in Britain.
He was respected and even loved by colleagues, who recognised in him someone committed and serious, encouraging and listening, and an example of how someone in a senior position should relate to his staff.
Alan enjoyed playing cricket, football, rugby, table tennis and golf. For some years he was a local preacher in the Methodist church, through which he met Doreen Gratton from the nearby village of Thornley; they married in 1963 and had two children.
After Doreen’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s in 2014, Alan looked after her at home, with the support of my sister Jessica and me.
He is survived by Doreen, Jessica and me, and his sister Margaret.
