What does

The Warwickshire Rural Hub is a membership organisation which helps farm and rural businesses to prosper. We do this by issuing a monthly e-news, organising free topical events, running 3 sustainable farming groups, networking with 22 partner organisations and organising health and welfare events at Rugby Livestock Mart.  Rural Hub events have been held on a variety of subjects such as;

• rural planning advice
• accessing biodiversity offsetting funding
• managing farm woodland
• new technology in farming
• funding available for farm diversification 
• Class Q regulations for planning applications

FARMING IN WARWICKSHIRE

• There are around 2000 farm holdings in the county managing 160,000 hectares of land 
• Approximately 6000 people work on farms, with 1500 of these being casual workers
• Farms in the county generate £138 million towards the West Midlands economy (not including the wider food and drink sectors)
• Major Warwickshire commodities include combinable crops, arable, livestock, horticulture and potatoes
• 510 farms are growing cereals on 80,000 hectares
• 65,000 cattle and 290,000 sheep are grazing 29,500 lowland hectares on just over 750 farms

Thank you to Warwickshire NFU for providing these statistics

Meet the Co-ordinator

Jane has been the Co-ordinator of the Rural Hub since December 2016 working part-time from her home office.  As well as pulling together our monthly e-news for members and organising our events, Jane also updates the website on a daily basis, keeps our social media pages active and manages the book-keeping.  

Prior to joining the Rural Hub Jane worked for Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group as their Personnel Manager.  Outside of work Jane enjoys long walks with her dog Beatrice and gardening.  

OUR SOCIAL VALUE RETURN

In 2020 the Rural Hub participated in a Defra sponsored project to measure the social value return of our work.  But what is social value return?  Put simply, it is the answer to the question “if £x is spent on delivering an activity, what is the value of that same £x in terms of wider benefits to the local community?”    After participating in the project the Rural Hub was calculated as having a social value return of:

£9.84 for every £1 that is invested in us by our sponsor and business supporters

You can read the full report from the project here: Warwickshire Rural Hub Report 

Or read the shorter impact report here: Warwickshire Rural Hub Impact Card