In 2025, Rother District Council (RDC) agreed a 3 year Partnership Funding arrangement with ESCC to support the development of an Age-Friendly Communities programme in Rother.
An Age-Friendly Community is a place that enables people to age well and live a good later life. Somewhere that people can stay living in their homes, participate in the activities they value, and contribute to their communities, for as long as possible. The World Health Organisation (WHO) Age-Friendly Communities framework acts as an evidence-based guide to support communities to reach this goal and RDC is using this framework to support its programme development.
Rother has a high proportion of its residents aged 65+ (32%). This is projected to increase to 40% of the Rother population by 2037. Rother currently has the second highest percentage of residents that are older people of all local authorities in England and Wales.
RDC became a member of the UK Age-Friendly Communities Network, as part of collaborative work with Rother Voluntary Action and East Sussex County Council on the Healthy Ageing in Rural Europe (HAIRE) project, that ended in March 2023. This new partnership funding agreement aims to help us work with partners to lead work on Age- Friendly Communities, that will enable older adults to age well in Rother.
We are currently working on our Age-Friendly Rother strategy and action plan and when available we will publish these on this page.
To support the development of the programme, RDC has commissioned Rother Voluntary Action (RVA) to develop and co-ordinate a new Age-Friendly Rother Network (AFRN), with work beginning from April 2026 and scheduled to run until March 2028.
A new Intergenerational Grants programme is one of the first projects developed as part of the Age-Friendly Rother programme. It is designed to support local organisations to bring people of different ages together through shared activities to build relationships, strengthen communities, and improve wellbeing. For further information please click the button below.
