Mayor of Bromley Cllr Mike Botting at the recent Let’s Talk Better event. Photo by David Walkley.
Community House in Bromley is a special place. Home to numerous charities and community groups, and a location for some outstanding community events, it has an Open Day coming up on 15th July, between 11am and 3pm. There you can talk with people from those organisations, learn more about what they do, and look at the building that is their home.
Community House was formerly Bromley’s Magistrates Court, built in Bromley during the early part of the 19th century.
Following the opening of a new Magistrates Court building nearly 60 years later, Bromley Centre for Voluntary Service (the forerunner of Community Links Bromley) commissioned a study on how best to use the original Courts building and assess whether there was a need for a community resource centre. Bromley Council appointed a team of architects to assess the feasibility of turning the old courts into centre for voluntary and community activity and subsequently both surveys found in favour the idea of creating a home and a hub for Bromley’s vibrant voluntary and community sector. The Council granted a lease in 2000 to a new charitable body to manage the building for the benefit of the community, and so Bromley Voluntary Sector Trust (BVST) and Community House Bromley were born.
Opened to the public at the end of 2000, the project was boosted by the successful fundraising activities of the founding committee, which included formal fundraising dinners and sponsoring flagstones in the South Street Café courtyard. These funds, together with matching funding from Bromley Council, and added to by support from many local businesses and grants from the Big Lottery Fund, meant Community House could open.
The five founding tenants of the building were Age UK Bromley & Greenwich, Citizens Advice Bromley, Community Links Bromley, deafPLUS and Relate (to use their current names), who remain in residence.
It has recently been announced that Community House is to be auctioned and the resident organisations required to move to new premises. More here.
There is a group, ‘Community House Champions’, who are active in promoting the potential retention and improved use of the building as a community hub.
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