Bedfordshire

Our History

Bedfordshire is one of the smallest counties in England, with an area of only 1,235 square kilometres. Over half of its population of 670,000 lives in the two urban areas of Bedford and Luton.  The county has witnessed a rapid growth in population during the twenty first century, largely due to its proximity to London, and this has brought challenges to the county’s rural settlements

Founded in October 1953, Bedfordshire Rural Community Council (BRCC) was one of eighteen Rural Community Councils (RCCs) established between 1946 and 1962 with funding from the Development Commission.  At that time, the role of RCCs was often to provide support for other organisations, such as the Old People’s Welfare Council, the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas and the Playing Fields Association.  In addition, most RCCs gave direct assistance to parish councils and village hall committees, acknowledging their importance in rural community life.  BRCC was no exception – it carried out all of these functions.

The 1970s saw a shift in BRCC’s ability to innovate, due to the employment of a Countryside Officer, who initiated many new schemes, such as the Community Volunteer Task Force and Bedfordshire Rural Enterprise. The latter employed patch workers to develop new community activities and to gather invaluable information about the county’s rural areas.  This was a springboard for many new initiatives throughout the 1980s and 1990s.  Examples include two mobile services – an information van and a toy library; the School-Farm Link Scheme; a rural childcare project, rural arts provision, a Rural Land Bank and a Forum for Carers, to name but a few.  These innovative projects were carried out alongside the more traditional roles of supporting parish councils and village hall committees. BRCC grew in terms of income, staff numbers and its standing in the county.

BRCC has a reputation for having a ‘can do’ attitude, and has adapted over the years to face changing circumstances.  During the early part of the twenty first century BRCC brought on board new environmental expertise and was able to play a key role in green infrastructure planning, which complemented its ongoing work on community-led planning. It recognised the increasingly important role of community transport, and began to manage community minibus schemes and community rail lines.

 It was also able to build on its successful Village Care Schemes initiative to employ Village Agents.  It realised too that to provide some services to rural areas it would also need to engage with the county’s urban areas – when it set up and ran a Carers Short Breaks Bureau, it did so for both urban and rural carers alike. These areas of work put BRCC in a strong position to develop its current, very successful Social Prescribing service. Similarly, as public funds were becoming increasingly hard to access, BRCC shifted to an asset-based approach to raising funds, by taking over the management of a vineyard, raising funds to restore a Victorian station building and managing it as multi-purpose centre, and running The Barn, a shop and café.  BRCC continues to flourish; it has a current turnover in excess of £2 million and in 2020-21 it won gold at the National Small and Medium Enterprise awards; no mean feat for one of the smallest counties in England!

Bedfordshire Resources