When King Charles made a personal visit to Sarah Anderson to confer her damehood two days before her death from cancer at the age of 69, she characteristically did not let slip the opportunity to ask him to help The Listening Place, the suicide prevention charity she founded a decade ago in the belief that sustained, in-person support was vital to save many people in crisis.
Anderson had been a Samaritans volunteer in central London for 37 years, but parted company with the charity in 2015 over its then policy, since partially reversed, of no longer offering meetings with an identified counsellor. With the support of a group of other disaffected volunteers including her husband, Terrence Collis, whom she had met at Samaritans, she set up The Listening Place the following year to provide free, face-to-face support for people with suicidal thoughts. Today, the charity offers more than 4,000 appointments a month across four bases in London and has to date received more than 40,000 referrals, the great majority via the NHS.
The drive that Anderson showed in developing her charity was equally evident in other parts of her life. She was a successful entrepreneur and champion of small businesses, in which respect she was appointed to lead a government review of regulation in 2009; she was firmly committed to workplace equality, serving as a commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a public appointments assessor and a member of the governing council of the conciliation service Acas; and she and her husband fostered children at their home in Westminster almost without break for 16 years until 2024.
Anderson’s maxim in life, according to her family, was “JFDI” – three letters of which stood for “just do it”.
She was born in west London, to Derek Anderson, a businessman whose interests embraced co-ownership of a chocolate factory, and Joan (nee Ansley), a homemaker. She had an elder sister and younger brother. She was sent to boarding school in Buckinghamshire but left under a cloud at the age of 10 after serial disciplinary infringements including concealment of sweets in her underwear and consumption of a banana before grace had been said. Her subsequent schooling at the independent Queen’s college, London, proved more successful under the tolerant guidance of its unconventional then headteacher, Stephanie Fierz, and she became head girl.
From Queen’s, Anderson went to Westminster College, now part of Capital City College, where she obtained an HND in hotel and catering administration in 1977. She joined the Grand Metropolitan group, where she became personnel and training manager, and built up a catering staff agency that, in 1986, she took private as Mayday (now Hamilton Mayday). She continued to run the agency until she sold up in 2006.
A diverting business sideline was Toodle-Loo, a foldable toilet seat insert for toddlers, which was an idea she and a neighbour conceived when they were both young mothers. The product was marketed initially from the family home and her own children retain memories of being enlisted to pack orders on the kitchen table.
Anderson’s passion for enterprise drew her into work with the CBI employers’ organisation, where she chaired its small- and medium-sized enterprise council from 2000 to 2004. She served on the government Small Business Council over the same period, and on the Better Regulation Task Force from 1997 to 2002; her later regulation review found that many small businesses were paying for help in dealing with red tape, rather than trusting official guidance that was widely seen as inaccessible and low quality.
Another cause she pursued strongly was that of equality. She served on the Women and Work Commission from 2004 to 2009, the Commission for Employment and Skills from 2007 to 2009, the Acas council from 2004 to 2011 and the EHRC from 2011 to 2014. She was a public appointments assessor from 2012 to 2016 and an independent member of the state honours committee from 2019 to 2023. Outside government, she sat on the Conservative party’s internal inquiry into Islamophobia that reported in 2021.
Anderson also held a number of non-executive director roles, notably with the government’s Job Centre Plus executive agency from 2003 to 2011.
Founding and growing The Listening Place became a preoccupation over the past decade and she served as its chief executive until June last year, when she stepped down because of her illness. She described herself as “pretty much a workaholic” and was open about her own mental health issues, confessing that “I manage to stress myself out quite easily”.
With little time for leisure interests, she relied heavily on the support of her husband, a PR director whom she married in 1989, and their children, Benjamin and Sophie. All three survive her, as do her sister and brother. She also maintained close and lasting relationships with several of the young people the family had fostered, many of whom had complex challenges.
Anderson, who was appointed CBE in 2000, was made a dame in the 2026 new year honours list, but the award was brought forward exceptionally to 5 December. The king travelled to her at the Royal Trinity hospice in south London for a private investiture ceremony, at the conclusion of which she requested a kiss.
• Sarah Lillian Anderson, charity founder and entrepreneur, born 19 June 1956; died 7 December 2025
