Dame Rachel Waterhouse
October 2020
Dame Rachel Waterhouse, former Chairman of Consumers’ Association and keen champion of the consumer, has died. For many years she was involved with Loughborough University’s Institute of Consumer Ergonomics (now part of Loughborough Design School) and in 1978 she received an honorary doctorate from the University.
In the early 1960s Rachel joined the Birmingham Consumers’ Group, a decision which changed her life completely. She became a member of the Consumers’ Association’s Council (publishers of Which? magazine) two years later and in 1982 became Chairman of CA Council, a position she held for eight years.
From the mid-1960s the consumer movement rapidly gained recognition, including within Government. It was here that Rachel’s skills really came to the fore. She was appointed to almost twenty public bodies as the consumers’ representative. These varied from the Potato Marketing Board to the National Economic Development Council (chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer) and from the Duke of Edinburgh’s Inquiry into Social Housing to the Council of the Banking Ombudsman. She was as comfortable discussing financial securities and investments as the microbiological safety of food; one day she might be visiting a farm, another an offshore oil rig (with the Health and Safety Commission).
In 1970 she was asked to assist in the formation of the Institute for Consumer Ergonomics at Loughborough University. She was the first Chairman and became its President in 1980, serving until 1990. In 2002 the Institute was incorporated into the Ergonomics and Safety Research Institute and is now part of Loughborough Design School.
In 1978, Loughborough granted her an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in recognition of this work.
For championing consumer affairs, she was made a CBE in 1980 and DBE in 1990.
She also received an honorary Doctorate of Social Science from the University of Birmingham (in 1990), and an honorary Doctorate of Science from Aston University (in 1998).
In 1990 she was appointed a Trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She was also a leading member of the Church of England’s Affirming Catholicism movement.
She died peacefully, following a stroke, at the age of 97, leaving four children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She is sorely missed by all who knew her.