What’s more, Kerr’s sources say there are more spending cuts around the corner which will have to be coped with.
'The NHS we think we should have isn't affordable'
“It’s put an enormous pressure on our financial situation,” she says in her office in Stanmore, north-west London.
“We started the year with a predicted £2 million deficit, which we brought down to £600,000. We made around a dozen redundancies in management. What we have not done is cut the workforce who provide the 24/7 care.
“But it’s only going to get tougher. Our costs are going up but our funding isn’t.”
Speaking ahead of Norwood’s annual dinner next month, she says the charity’s £10 million annual income target has increased.
Kerr, who joined the charity in 2011, is fighting back. The charity lobbies the government through the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group.
But until its campaigns against cuts bear fruit, Norwood is reliant on 10 per cent of heavyweight donors to provide 90 per cent of funds.
Kerr, who sits upright in a smart dress, pen and notes at the ready throughout the interview, refuses to say which high-profile supporters donate the most (Simon Cowell, Philip Green and Richard Desmond, the charity’s president, are current backers) — but she confirms that the charity relies on voluntary donations for a third of its income.
She adds: “I learnt very early on in my NHS career that I was publicly accountable for the money I spent — it’s no different here. I feel a moral obligation to use it wisely.”
Kerr is one of the highest paid communal leaders — earning more than £100,000 in 2012. She is also one of the most highly regarded, named the 77th most influential figure in this year’s JC Power 100 list.
She has a wealth of experience in the healthcare sector behind her — having worked for the NHS for more than 14 years, first looking after GP contracts and finally as its executive director of commissions, where she managed a budget of £163 million.
Kerr says she left the NHS when faced with “more ethical and moral” dilemmas.
She recalls: “I was making decisions about individual treatments. For instance, giving a mother another three months with her family at the cost of £100,000, which wasn’t affordable.
“I was being kept awake by some of the decisions that had to be made. The NHS we think we should have, will never be affordable.”
She joined Norwood after four years as the chief executive of Chai Cancer Care. Over that period, she orchestrated the opening of six more centres across the UK.
At Norwood, she has also pushed for more communal mergers. Drugsline was brought into the Norwood family this year after it went into administration, and she hints there may be more “in the pipeline”. She says: “We are having a very interesting discussion with a potential partner about shared use of space. It’s too early to say anything.
“I’m a great believer in sweating communal assets. I don’t like it when egos get in the way of sensible mergers or partnerships. There are too many buildings in our community that are only fully utilised at weekends or nine-to-five on weekdays. We don’t use our buildings seven days a week from 7am to 7pm, and we should. It’s nuts, a complete and utter waste of money.”
Kerr, a former City of London Girls School student, completed a business course at Harrow College of Technology and Art before starting a family.
A mother-of-two, she worked as a sales director, is a trained nursery teacher and recruitment consultant, but found that none of those careers suited her.
She says: “I wanted a job where I had a chance to make life better for somebody. All of my best days are when I’m meeting service users.
“Every week is a busy week. It’s like most jobs actually; you come in in the morning with a list of things to do. [It] might have ten things on it and at the end of the day you find that it’s still got nine things on it.”
“What brings me into work every day is that I strive to deliver an organisation that provides services I would want my family to use. But you do need to keep emotion out of it when you’re dealing with a hot issue.”
One hot issue that she faced came with a data protection breach, which cost the charity £70,000 in 2012 after a social worker left files unattended.
“At the end of the day, when you’re running services for vulnerable people, things can go wrong,” she says.
“We did an audit across the whole organisation, into its dusty corners. We developed an action plan which was speedily implemented.
“I am now very confident that our data system and processes are very sound and the training is very good, but you can never account for human error.”
When the United Synagogue member, who lives in Radlett, is not in the office, she says she enjoys dancing, travelling and is a “lifelong reader”, now on her fourth Kindle.
For now, she’s looking forward to celebrating Norwood’s 200th anniversary of royal patronage next year.
Pointing to the charity’s first letter of patronage, she says: “It’s a museum piece. I found that when I first arrived and said ‘get that out of the basement and on the wall’.”
