We are working in extraordinary times at the moment, but we wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that, at the Rural Services Network, our staff are all working remotely and are still here to provide services to you. 

We’ve been taking some time to reflect on how life is different now to how it was 12 months ago, and we’ve put together the attached flyer which sets out some of our achievements over the last year. 

We’re particularly proud of delivering yet another successful Annual Rural Conference, and regional seminar/networking events in every region greatly increasing our contact with our membership.  In addition, we pursued the call for a Rural Strategy and we gave evidence at a number of key Government inquiries, helping to raise rural up the agenda in Parliament.

Please click below to view our achievements

→ Rural Services Network (Local Authorities) Achievements 2019-2020 

→ Rural Services Partnership Achievements 2019-2020

We aim to continue to deliver our services to you in 2020-2021 although there will be some ‘tweaks’ to how we operate with no face to face meetings for the foreseeable future.  We are  led by Government guidance on this and are exploring ways that we can still network remotely with all of our members at this critical time. If you have thoughts as to how we can support our members on the ground we want to hear them, please.

Rural communities need our support more than ever at this difficult time, to ensure that they are not left behind- in either the short or long terms - in terms of access to vital health services, connectivity,  basic needs such as access to food and, of course, support to people, businesses and the economy

We will work with all of our member organisations as we aim to ensure that RURAL COMMUNITIES are part of the Government’s agenda as they deal with this outbreak. Together with some national other rural organisations we are now engaged in short weekly conference calls with Defra’s ‘Rural Impact Cell’ and able to use these discussions to raise rural issues both with Defra and through them all Government Departments.