THE Joseph Rowntree Foundation has become a real force for good.

In the last ten years, it has spoken out powerfully on everything from poverty and inequality to the lack of affordable housing and the urgent need for us to improve the way we treat people with dementia.

Best of all, the JRF doesn't just take up positions for the sake of them. It does its research, considers the impact of the way we live on the lives of real people, and proposes clear solutions based on evidence.

In doing so, it acts in the very best traditions of Joseph and Seebohm Rowntree. And in a Britain that has struggled desperately with recession and austerity, it has been a voice of calm common sense campaigning for decency and compassion.

For the last decade, the woman driving forward the foundation's work, and helping to make it the force it is today, has been chief executive Julia Unwin.

Now she has announced that, at the end of the year, she will be stepping down.

She will be greatly missed. Julia - and the foundation she has led for ten years - has done a great deal to make the Britain we live in today a better, fairer, more caring society.

We're confident that the JRF will continue to do that under a new leadership.

But the achievements of the last ten years amount to a legacy that Ms Unwin can be rightly proud of.

We wish her well in whatever she does next.