Joseph Rowntree Foundation chief executive Campbell Robb: My mission to make work pay in 2019

One of the most famous sons of a city built on chocolate money, the Quaker businessman and philanthropist Joseph Rowntree left a lasting legacy in York with his commitment to community and social justice.

Deeply dedicated to improving the quality of life of employees at his family confectionery business, he belied the rising poverty of the era by setting up the village of New Earswick with good quality housing for workers and managers - including two fruit trees in each house.

Fast-forward nearly 120 years and the charity that bears is his name is describing his efforts to continue the traditions established by Rowntree in another period of far-reaching changes, both in his home city and across the country.

Campbell Robb is speaking at the York office of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. His desk is just a few yards from the former home of Joseph's son Seebohm, a pioneering social researcher who undertook one of the country’s first investigations into poverty.

"He wandered around York literally counting poor people because there were no records, he walked around and did almost a census of poverty, that report helped charge the Liberal government of the 30s," he tells The Yorkshire Post.

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"We still count poverty but we don't do it by going into the streets any more. Those ideals of driving and making and coming up with the evidence to show what happens, we are going to keep doing that."

In the modern-day equivalent of Seebohm's work, the JRF last month released a report setting out what it described as a relentless rise in the number of working families struggling to make ends meet over the last five years. The charity has identified that there are 1.2 million people in poverty in Yorkshire and the Humber, 670,000 of whom are working adults.

Housing costs, transport and the way social security works all play a part in the rise in poverty, but Mr Robb says his focus is on making work pay. He cites examples of places across Yorkshire with large numbers of people in service industries like hospitality and care, characterised by relatively low pay and a lack of chances to progress.

"You see it everywhere now, you can really feel it and you can talk to people all the time," he says. "They are doing what they are supposed to which is work hard, have a full-time job, and they are supposed to be able to look after family and buy a house, and most of them can't."

The JRF recently helped produce the film A Northern Soul, based in Hull during the City of Culture, and Mr Robb describes a moment from the production which sums up the problem facing many workers.

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"At one point the main character turns round the camera, he has just come off a shift in the factory and says 'I have worked all my life, grafted really hard and I have got nothing. I have got debt, I've got no home'.

"How do we make work pay for people, give them a real chance of progression, how do we work with employers and the state and unions to really create a different way of working. Whatever happens post-Brexit, we need an economy that really works for everyone."