BOOST OF THE PENSIONER POUND

No longer the economy’s poor relations, newly-wealthy retirees can benefit Yorkshire communities with the pensioner’s pound, despite the spiralling cost of caring for them in old age . David Behrens reports on the change in attitudes.

ATTRACTING NEW retirees to parts of Yorkshire could benefit some local economies rather than drain them, a national think-tank has said.

A report from the Resolution Foundation challenges the conventional belief that encouraging older people to move to an area in increasing numbers will necessarily burden council budgets with the increased cost of caring for them.

The issue has been a hot potato in the county’s most deeply rural areas, where many villages have become retirement havens for former town and city dwellers.

But the foundation says that older people often now have greater spending power than those of working age, and that the value of the “pensioner pound” can help to keep alive struggling economies.

Its chief executive, Torsten Bell, said: “If you go back 20 years, pensioners were much poorer. Now they have the same average income as the working age population.”

He also said the age profile of an area did not necessarily define its wealth.

“Not everywhere that’s younger is doing well. There are poor young places as well as rich ones.”

Cities such as York could particularly benefit from “rich baby boomers” – people born after the Second World War who had now moved into retirement, Mr Bell added.

York City Council heard earlier this month that the area had been a “victim of its own success”, having attracted buyers from outside the region to fill nearly half the £375,000 flats in a new retirement block at Bishophill.

But Mr Bell said: “York should

be a bit careful because one of the reasons they’re doing so well is that some of its older people, and those who have been able to move there, have had a higher income growth recently.

“There’s a reason why a lot of shops in York are still open when other high streets are struggling. The pensioner pound is quite important in those areas, which don’t have a lot of other industries but are able to attract people who spend their money there.

“People talk too often about older being just an economic challenge.

“Clearly they do bring costs of pensions and social care, but for many people it’s a great phase of their lives, and for some places it also brings economic opportunities.

“If you can attract better-off pensioners who spend their money locally, it can help support your working-age population.

“As an economic strategy, people will want to hold on to their existing higher-income boomers or make sure that they bringing in are new ones to spend money locally.”

Carl Les, leader of North Yorkshire County Council, said he recognised the attraction of the county to retirees and that to discourage them from migrating there would be wrong.

“I can understand how somebody who has lived all their life in a city might want to come to one of the quieter parts of the country,” he said.

“And of course they have the advantage that the property they’re disposing of in the city is probably of considerably higher value than the one they’re going to move to.”

But he said their purchasing power also created “a squeeze – not only on house prices because young people can no longer afford them, but also on social care costs”.

Prof Yvonne Birks, from the social policy research unit at the University of York, warned that pensioners themselves had often not taken into account the likely costs of their own care.

She said: “Particularly within the group who are perceived as well-off, people think about pensions but they don’t think about what will happen if they need to care for someone or be cared for.”