It all began over a bottle of claret in a City wine bar in the early 2000s. Roger Warren Evans, a social entrepreneur and barrister, was lamenting with his solicitor friend Stephen Lloyd the low profile of the not-for-profit sector.
As the evening wore on, the two lawyers developed the idea of creating an organisation that served the public interest but was not subject to the strict governance controls of a charity. Out of their conversation emerged what became known as community interest companies (CICs). There are now more than 37,000 registered in the UK.
For Warren Evans, who has died aged 89, it was one of the crowning achievements of an extraordinarily varied career that ranged across pioneering legal cases, building homes, being a government adviser and supporting asylum seekers.
The wine bar discussion prompted him to write a pamphlet promoting the idea. The key features were restrictions on the distribution of dividends so that funds are recycled back to the community, and an asset lock preventing the organisation’s holdings being removed for personal gain. It was a way of reversing the trend of privatising mutual organisations that became popular under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
The proposal, building on the experience of charities, co-operative societies and community enterprises, was well received by Tony Blair’s Labour government and incorporated into the Companies (Audit, Investigations And Community Enterprise) Act 2004. The original aim had been to call them public interest companies – but that title had already been adopted for another government scheme.
Born in Mumbles, near Swansea, Roger was the son of Thomas, variously a barrister, harbour master and bank manager, and Mary (nee Cann), a science teacher who loved painting.
During the second world war, in 1942, Roger, his sister, Eleanor, and mother were dispatched across the Atlantic. Another ship in their convoy also carrying evacuees was torpedoed by U-boats. That experience and his time in Canada generated a lifetime’s sympathy for the plight of refugees.
Although the family were not religious, his mother later sent him to board at Leighton Park in Reading, a Quaker school that shaped his outlook. There he edited the school newspaper – interviewing Aneurin Bevan and Clement Attlee – and was on a youth delegation to Paris to observe the general assembly of the UN.
He won a scholarship to study modern languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, but deferred entry for two years to complete national service in the Royal Navy, where he taught himself Russian and became a radio operator. He was demobilised in Cyprus and stayed on, singing with his guitar at restaurants and occasionally sleeping on the beach.
Being fluent in four languages by the time he arrived at university, he switched to history and economics – graduating with first-class honours in 1959. At Cambridge, he was a keen debater and sang comedy songs at the Footlights club.
Called to the bar in 1962, as a member of Gray’s Inn, he also presented an interview programme for Anglia TV and a series on Marxism, written with Eric Hobsbawm, for BBC2. At the same time, he began a PhD in sociology at London School of Economics supervised by the sociologist and Open University founder Michael Young. Though he did not complete his studies, he became a trustee of the Institute of Community Studies – now the Young Foundation.
Working alongside Antony Lester, another prominent young barrister, Warren Evans took one of the first successful human rights cases – Alam and Khan, an immigration claim – against the UK to Strasbourg, at what was then the European Commission for Human Rights (1966-68). He also became legal correspondent for New Society magazine, while developing an interest in charity and company law.
In 1966 he married Elizabeth James, a history teacher. They met through her tenancy of a house owned by his mother. Elizabeth had married and divorced before they met a second time for dinner. Within half an hour, he proposed. It took a week of passionate letter-writing to persuade her to accept.
They lived in Hackney, east London, where he was a key member of the campaign group Equal Rights, which helped draft the 1968 Race Relations Act, and he worked alongside Dipak Nandy (father of the culture secretary Lisa Nandy). The following year, convinced that lawyers invariably turn up after things have gone wrong, he abruptly changed career, joining the housebuilder Bovis Group as a manager. He even trained as a bricklayer.
After serving as a Labour councillor in Hackney, he eventually moved back to Swansea with his family. In 1975, informed by his housebuilding experience, he joined the Department of Environment as an adviser to the Labour minister Anthony Crosland.
Warren Evans returned to the private sector in 1977, as managing director of Barratt Developments, then joined local government as director of Swansea’s Centre for Trade and Industry. From the mid-80s he worked for Sainsbury’s on property development. He was proud of rejecting a Norman Foster design for a flagship hypermarket that he said resembled the inside of an insect and had nowhere to plug in the freezers.
He maintained his interest in human rights, serving as a council member for the organisation Liberty. In 1998, arguing that it was wrong for all the candidates to come from Cardiff, he stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Labour party in Wales.
Two years later he was the subject of a parliamentary early day motion congratulating him on walking from Swansea to London in 18 days to arrive “on time at his workplace on his 65th birthday” as a protest against ageism.
After volunteering in retirement to support asylum seekers arriving in Swansea, he realised they needed proper legal representation at tribunals, so qualified as an immigration adviser and established the charity Asylum Justice in 2005.
He cared for Elizabeth in her later years; she died in 2018. He is survived by their children, Katharine and Owen, and a granddaughter, Lana.
• (John) Roger Warren Evans, barrister, government adviser, businessman and social entrepreneur, born 11 December 1935; died 30 November 2025
