The Royal Countryside Fund transitions from The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund Group

September 4, 2023

After six years, The Royal Countryside Fund and our direct subsidiary Countryside Fund Trading Ltd have become independent of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund (PWCF) group.

Nikki Jeffery (Executive Director, PWCF, far left) and Keith Halstead (Executive Director, RCF, second left) on a visit to Positive Community Action, an RCF funded grant project.

The Royal Countryside Fund would like to thank PWCF for the operational support they have provided as we accelerated our growth and built our support base to do ever more for the people of the countryside, since we became a charitable subsidiary of the PWCF group in 2017.

Whilst part of the PWCF group, The Royal Countryside Fund extended fivefold the scale of its farm resilience programmes having now reached over 2,500 farming families, while our grants have increased by a third since 2020 totaling over £11m to more than 500 rural communities across the country.

Earlier this year, the Boards of Trustees of both charities agreed that The Royal Countryside Fund would formally separate from the PWCF group to become a completely independent charity. This occurred on the 31st August 2023.

I would like to acknowledge our appreciation and gratitude to the trustees and staff of PWCF for all their support and encouragement over the past six years, while looking forward to continue the vision of our founder, HM The King, in supporting those who live and work in the British countryside.

Keith Halstead, Executive Director of The Royal Countryside Fund said