CRC – RIP

Tomorrow my previous employer the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) will be wound down. Although the organisation itself will continue with a handful of staff, for most people tomorrow is effectively their last day. Over 50 people will be made redundant including me. Today in the Guardian one of my colleagues David Land, a senior policy advisor at the CRC, talked about how this had affected both the organisation and him personally. The article is similar to a comment piece I did for the paper. Yet David is far from down.

With another colleague Andrew Lee he has set up the Social Innovation Unit.  According to their website it “helps councils/public sector bodies, social enterprises, the private sector and the voluntary sector to listen to new ideas, realise innovations, and deliver better services, for less, to people”. Writing in the Guardian the journalist who interviewed him Jane Dudman stated “Land also demonstrates the resilience of many who will now be considering their future outside the public sector. With his co-managing director, Andrew Lee, he has set up a new organisation, which will focus on areas such as young carers as well as rural health, transport and communities. The aim, he says, is to improve public services, but this time from outside, rather than in”.