My friend and former colleague Roger Court, who has died aged 80 of Covid-19, was appointed in the early 1980s as project senior probation officer in Leeds, developing accommodation, education, employment and welfare rights opportunities with the aim of reducing reoffending.
Starting in a very small way with a shared house provided by Leeds Federated Housing Association, he was the catalyst for the creation in 1984 of the Timble Housing Project, a founding component of the Foundation Housing Organisation.
Roger co-operated with voluntary and statutory organisations across the city, making an important contribution to a culture of sharing resources and working together. Throughout his life he had sympathy for people who were marginalised, and his unorthodox approach and concern for social justice gave a practical expression to this.
He was born in Coventry to Lucy (nee Thorley), who worked in the jewellery trade, and Percy Court, a draughtsman. The family story is that he spent much of his babyhood on a shelf in the air-raid shelter while Coventry was being blitzed. He was educated at Warwick school but never related well to its public school culture.
I knew him as a pacifist but, perhaps typically, he was briefly a member of the school cadet force. He went on to the London School of Economics, an experience he did not enjoy and that he felt he wasted. Soon after graduating Roger joined the Probation Service, and in Cambridge he did innovative work with heroin addicts, before moving to Leeds.
After leaving the Probation Service in 1993, he followed a long-held ambition to train and work as a baker. On retirement he volunteered with locally based groups and supported campaigns concerned with mental health and social welfare.
A walk with Roger was an entertainment. He could quote long fragments of poetry and Shakespeare from memory. He was gregarious and friendly, often engaging complete strangers in conversation, his hearing problem being no deterrent, although latterly the miracle of a cochlear implant transformed his life.
He was a good friend to me and my family.
He is survived by his wife, Hilary, a teacher, whom he met while he was a student, and married in 1962, and their daughters, Anna and Rowan, and grandson, Alastair.
