“Charity Bank helped us save money on our loan”

Find out what Jerry Roodhouse, a trustee of Lawrence Sheriff Almshouses, has to say about the loans process.  

Why did you need a loan from Charity Bank? 

We needed a loan to completely remodel our almshouse properties, including fitting them with solar panels, new kitchens, wet rooms, central heating, double glazing and better insulation. The current energy rating is E, which will soon be illegal for rented properties. 

We’re also building four new properties as there’s a distinct shortage of one-bed affordable homes in the Rugby area. The local council have at least 50 people on their waiting list who would fit our criteria. 

What would you have done if you hadn’t been able to get a loan? 

Our other options were to sell everything off and close the charity down or to do minimal work, which wouldn’t really have achieved anything.  

The total cost of the job, including the four new properties, is over £1.5 million. We got in touch with the Almshouse Consortium, and they helped us to get a grant for £580,000 from Homes England towards the cost of the remodelling programme. We also got other grants, including £310,000 from the county council section 106, but without the loan we wouldn’t have been able to do the renovation work.  

Why did you choose Charity Bank for your loan? 

I’m a county councillor and do a lot of work in the voluntary sector, so I’d heard of Charity Bank. We’d also visited other almshouses and Charity Bank had been mentioned a few times. So, I gave Charity Bank a call and Carolyn Sims, the Director of Lending, came to look around the almshouses and meet the trustees. The relationship has grown from there. Carolyn has now been to visit us three times and has bought other members of staff with her.  

Do you think you have a better relationship with Charity Bank than you’d have with a typical high-street lender? 

I think so, yes. Charity Bank understand their customer base and what almshouses are about, which helps. You wouldn’t usually get someone of Carolyn’s level coming out to meet you. With Charity Bank, you can actually have that relationship and talk to people properly.   

My experience with the big high-street banks is that their relationship managers have a large case load. Would we have had as good a service from them? I doubt it.  

There’s a bit of give and take from Charity Bank; they listen to what your needs are, and then try to adapt to that. They actually came to us and said, “We’re rolling out this green deal. We think you should go for it as it’ll reduce your loan.” Not many banks would do that. The deal is part grant and part loan, so it’s extremely useful as we can put it towards solar power and energy efficiency improvements.  

How did you find the actual process of applying for the loan? 

The legal process and DocuSign elements were a bit difficult, but I think that’s because they’re not something we’d usually do in our day-to-day lives.  

We’re fortunate in that one of our trustees, Martin Denness, is an accountant, so he did cash flow forecasts and so on for us. I’m also used to running my own small business so have a basic understanding of finance, budgets and so on. Between the two of us, we had the right skills to go through the loans process. 

Will your loan repayments be covered by the fee that the residents pay? 

Yes, they’ll be covered and we’ll have some money left over, which means we can hopefully secure the charity’s future. 

If you need a loan for your charity, please visit our loans page.