Norfolk

Our History

Norfolk is a large county – approximately sixty miles across – with a long history of agricultural prosperity from the Iron Age to the present day. It was the cradle of the Agricultural Revolution in the eighteenth century, and farming remains a mainstay of the rural economy.

‘Very flat, Norfolk’, as Noel Coward put it, which means no hills or combes or dales – but it does have coast, broads, fens, woods and farmland. Environmentally, it is Premier League. It is supposed that in the countryside, from any one church another can be glimpsed, and if the church signifies a village, then Norfolk may claim to have the densest network of lowland villages in the country. There are over 500 of them, and their population with that of the market towns means that perhaps a majority of the county population may be classed as rural or sub-rural.

Fertile ground for the creation of a Rural Community Council, it may seem, yet Norfolk was virtually the last county to get such a body, one being finally set up in 1986. Tim Cawkwell was the first director, and its first two chairmen, Richard Lombe Taylor and Patricia Batty Shaw, along with its President, Sir Timothy Colman, ensured a successful beginning. The pre-existing Norfolk County Association of Parish and Town Councils and Norfolk Association of Village Halls came alongside it, and through these and other networks – and its own informal contacts in many of the villages, even the smallest ones – the RCC provided advice to communities on a broad front: how to get funding, how to learn from other communities, how to get structures right and so on, in order to underpin community life and to provide and encourage new voluntary initiatives.

Government funding, in several different forms, underwrote its activities, but from the start the RCC aimed to perform its work with a light touch in a spirit of voluntarism. This ethos has sustained it well to the present time in its efforts to serve the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. Having started out in 1986 in Hingham, in 2004 in recognition of the need for larger premises and disabled access it relocated to the town of Dereham right in the middle of the County.

Initially the RCC covered the whole of Norfolk but in the west of the county steps were taken to create a parallel organization. Thus it was that West Norfolk Voluntary and Community Action (WNVCA) was formed in 2002. For 22 years prior to that, an organisation had existed which predominantly focused on providing a volunteer bureau service. The new ‘Council for Voluntary Service’ would continue with that work but its primary aim was to provide support to the sector in the five core functions of development, representation, liaison, strategic partnerships and support.

WNVCA was based in Tuesday Market Place, King’s Lynn for many years but in 2011 it moved to a refurbished building on the North Lynn Industrial Estate where more services could be delivered in-house. Staff numbers varied from five to fifteen depending on the projects being delivered and funding available but always with Heather Farley as Chief Executive.

In 2014, with an eye on the financial challenges of the future and the difficulty in funding support and development services, merger options were explored. Positive conversations took place with Norfolk Rural Community Council which led to the formation of a new organisation in April 2015. This merger brought into being the current organization COMMUNITY ACTION NORFOLK.

TGC / Jan 2021

Norfolk Resources