Our colleague Richard Groves, who has died of cancer aged 65, made an unlimited contribution to housing and environmental health for greater than 40 years. On the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Rick developed and led teaching on housing for environmental health officers. He was director of the centre from 2005 to 2008.
Rick was born in Clacton, Essex, and studied town planning at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University) and social administration at Brunel University, Middlesex. He worked for the West Midlands voluntary organisation Community Planning Associates from 1972 to 1976, inside the early years of Birmingham’s ground-breaking urban renewal programme.
He was also instrumental in establishing Community Forum, a robust voice for local community suffering from the shift in policy from slum clearance to the advance of older housing. Rick was greatly respected by the numerous groups he worked with both directly and thru Community Forum. He spearheaded an method to housing renewal that was far prior to its time, wherein local communities played a central role in determining what should happen to the places where they lived.
Moving to Birmingham University in 1976, Rick maintained his interests in housing and concrete renewal through research and teaching. With colleagues inside the university and town, he developed a sequence of innovative courses. An annual 15-week programme for the govt. of India ran for 15 years and another for the Hong Kong Housing Authority lasted 17 years, while other programmes were provided for China and Korea. Rick also worked in Malaysia, South America, the Caribbean, Africa and the center East, mainly on housing and concrete development. He played a number one role in work on housing in developing countries, in the course of the European Network for Housing Research.
Rick had an extended involvement with voluntary organisations. He was chair of Shape Housing Association and the Birmingham Standing Conference for the only Homeless, and a board member of Art Homes and the West Midlands Kick Start Partnership, either one of which provided affordable finance to low income householders for the repair and upkeep in their homes.
Rick was a skilled cricketer, a member of Worcestershire County Cricket Club and a well-informed follower of England’s cricketing fortunes. He valued and enjoyed his family connections and friendships within the Isle of Gigha, within the Hebrides, and in Norway, either one of which he visited regularly. He had a voracious appetite for literature and for 16th- and 17th-century British history, and an endless capacity to encourage and support family, friends, colleagues and scholars of every age and nationalities.
He is survived by his wife, Kate, whom he married in 1973, sons, Tom, Josh, Jake and Sam, and 3 grandchildren.
