A 50-year-old public interest research charity has announced that it will close next year, citing a “cycle of financial precarity”.
The Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC), which was set up in 1973 and researched “issues that underpin the long-term public interest”, focused particularly on narratives around society, the economy and climate justice.
In a statement on its website, PIRC said that the “ongoing financial uncertainty, cycle of redundancy risk and long-term capacity strain have all taken a toll on us”.
PIRC added that the financial reasons for its closure were “part of a much bigger pattern of manufactured scarcity and infrastructure crumbling in this phase of late-stage capitalism”.
It cited the UK government’s austerity policies as having “hollowed out” the “shared infrastructure of everyday life” in the UK, including support for civil society.
On the current funding climate, it said: “In an economy predicated on the accumulation and maintenance of wealth, organisations like ours depend on persuading those who hold wealth to share it.
“Even when we’re successful, wealth distribution is within a non-profit industrial complex that seeks to maintain power and wealth where it has always been.
“Too often, funding is limited to short-term grant cycles built on narrow understandings of how change happens, and with little room or action to build long-term infrastructure and care.”
The charity said that it would be ensuring that its work “remains usable” by archiving it, including into a free online resource library, and would still be running its 1-2-1 narrative change courses up until its closure next year.
In its most recent accounts for 2025, the charity recorded an income of £176,000 and expenditure of £236,000, with five direct employees.
