The Rev Nicolas Stacey obituary

The Rev Nicolas Stacey, who has died aged 89, left the Anglican ministry because he came to believe that he was better able to try to build the kingdom of God through secular structures. He was an outstanding director of social services for Kent from 1974 to 1985 and had a lasting practical influence outside the county.

Nick was the kind of chief officer that social services departments needed as they found their feet in the 1970s – he possessed an exuberant style of leadership and an ability to translate innovative ideas into policies, combined with great imagination, commitment and energy. He was also flamboyant and iconoclastic, with a patrician manner and a tendency to say what he thought (often vehemently and loudly) in a self-confident, upper-middle-class accent.

Though this often stemmed from impatience with incompetence and inaction, it meant that he was someone about whom many of his greyer colleagues in local government felt instinctively, but wrongly, suspicious. After leaving Kent, never again was he to find or be offered a job commensurate with his gifts.

Born in London, Nick was a twin, and one of three children of wealthy parents, David Stacey, a stockbroker, and his wife, Gwen (nee Part). At the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, he won the king’s telescope (the naval equivalent of Sandhurst’s sword of honour). He saw active service as a sub-lieutenant aboard HMS Anson in the last months of the second world war, on the first ship to enter Hong Kong after the Japanese surrender.

At Dartmouth, he had come to a mature understanding of Christianity through the influence of a naval chaplain, Geoffrey Tiarks, later the bishop of Maidstone. The devastation of Hiroshima (he was there two months after the explosion) and what he saw of poverty, hardship and exploitation, as well as the often futile off-duty lives of fellow service personnel, convinced him of the reality of sin. As he wrote in his autobiography, Who Cares (1971), a priest “in the frontline against evil, the cause of so much human misery” was what he felt called to be.

He resigned his commission, studied modern history at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and sought ordination at Cuddesdon Theological College, outside the city. While at Oxford, Nick competed as a sprinter in the British Empire games in 1949, and in 1951 he served as captain of the combined Oxford and Cambridge athletics team. In the 1952 Olympics, he was semi-finalist in the 200m and finalist in the 4x400m relay.

He became assistant curate in the working-class parish of St Mark’s, Portsea, Hampshire (1953-58), and then served for two years as domestic chaplain to Leonard Wilson, the bishop of Birmingham. In 1960, he was installed as rector of Woolwich. His new, colourful and prophetic bishop, Mervyn Stockwood, exhorted his new recruit to “show the people of Woolwich that the church exists”. He saw quickly that the vast resources of the church in the 20th century were set up to serve the population patterns of the 17th century.

He believed that resources, talent and leadership poured into the existing parish system could reinvigorate the church. One of the churches was closed and a large Georgian one had its galleries sealed off, with the side aisles becoming offices for local voluntary organisations. It was thrown open for week-day secular use: the Samaritans moved in; there was a coffee bar; and a disco was held in the crypt. A youth club was so successful that it was used by probation officers for their young clients.

Nick gathered together a large team ministry, recruiting a Methodist minister, Baptist ministers and a Catholic priest. The Presbyterians closed their church and joined forces. Intensive parish visiting was embarked upon. He also helped to found and for a time ran (in an unpaid capacity) the Quadrant (now London & Quadrant) Housing Association, which today manages more than 70,000 homes.

During the week, 1,500 people made use of these new facilities but the effect on observance was marginal and the Sunday congregation only increased to 200. Four years later, in the Observer – he was adept at using national and local newspapers to make his case, as well as to fund his activities – Nick declared that despite hard work, successful fundraising and bright ideas his ministry at Woolwich had been a “failure”. He served for another three years as dean of Greenwich, but in 1968 left the parochial ministry. Much of what he did, such as ecumenical teams and shared premises, is now commonplace.

Oxfam was a characteristically unlikely destination, but his two years there as deputy director (1968-70) were not happy ones. There was resistance to his belief in the need for organisational change and, ironically in view of such charities’ later stances, that Oxfam should devote itself to campaigning for justice and engage in political debate as well as relieving poverty.

However, in 1971, Nick found his second vocation. Without any previous experience, he was appointed director of social services for Ealing, in west London. This was astonishing enough, but then, three years later, he found in Kent a social services department whose size and scale matched his ambitions: he inherited 6,000 employees who served a population of 1.5 million people.

His 11-year tenure transformed the department and created his two enduring legacies. One was Britain’s first professional fostering scheme. This helped shatter the belief that residential care was the only option for severely troubled young people. At the other end of the age scale, Nick pioneered an intensive, individually tailored home care for older people who would otherwise have languished in hospital. When, in 1988, Sir Roy Griffiths published his inquiry into community care, which was utterly to revolutionise social services, he said that his reforms were much influenced by what he had observed in Kent.

While at Kent, Nick attempted to revert to a former passion by applying for and getting chairmanship of the Sports Council, only to suffer the public humiliation of his appointment being blocked by Denis Howell, the sports minister. Nick left Kent in 1985 to run a project providing housing and sports facilities on the Isle of Dogs, east London, which was then abandoned when its sponsor withdrew. For a year he ran the small and now defunct Aids Policy Unit (he helped to found the National Aids Trust). But generally the post-Kent years were ones of voluntary work: he worked in various capacities for the church and as a voluntary prison chaplain to 200 sex offenders and chaired the East Thames Housing Group (1993-98).

He waited in vain for any offer that could really command his talents and energy. Against all the evidence of authority’s wariness of his unpredictability, he nourished the belief that he might be offered the deanery of Canterbury. In 2005, though, he was awarded the Cross of St Augustine, a personal gift of the archbishop of Canterbury, for his services to the church.

Behind Nick’s showmanship – he gave parties for his staff, one of which was attended by the singer Marianne Faithfull – there was also an insecure man who sought reassurance. He was someone concerned about the mark that he had made in the world, although it is a rare social services director who can hope to leave much beyond an efficient department and a good reputation.

In 1955 he married Anne Bridgeman. She died last year, and he is survived by their three children, David, Caroline and Mary, four grandsons, two granddaughters, and his brother, the writer and publisher Tom Stacey. His twin sister, Jill, died in 2005.