Beaufort Community Centre reopens in September

Beaufort Community Centre on Beaufort Road in Southbourne will reopen in September, four months after it shut, with BCP Council rather than a voluntary association running the building. The council announced the reopening on 7 August and says it is working with local people on what the hall is used for next.

One thing is already settled, and it is the part that will matter most to some families: childcare is not coming back to the site. The council says other parts of the building will reopen for community activities, and that it worked with affected families after the closure to find alternative childcare arrangements.

Why it closed

The centre closed in April after the Beaufort Community Association decided to stop operating it. The association then surrendered its lease, and the council picked up responsibility for the building.

That is the whole of the council’s published explanation, and it does not say why the association stopped. The Charity Commission register fills in some of the scale of what was lost. Beaufort Community Association, registered charity number 800843, gives its address as the centre itself. Its last filed accounts, for the year ending 31 March 2024, record income of £363,839 and spending of £331,120, run by four trustees with one volunteer and no paid trustees.

The register lists what the money paid for: a pre-school, after school clubs and all day care, plus bingo, karate, tai chi, ballroom and Latin dancing, ballet and tap, disco dancing, keep fit and slimming classes and a University of the Third Age group. That is a large operation for a single hall, and it explains why the loss of childcare is the piece the council singled out.

The charity remains on the register. Its annual return and accounts for the year ending 31 March 2025 are recorded as overdue, by 198 days as of today. The register shows a mixed filing record before that: on time for 2021, 127 days late for 2022, 20 days late for 2023 and on time for 2024. An overdue return is a matter of record and nothing more; the Commission has published no regulatory action against the charity, and the association’s own website is still online. We have not been able to obtain a statement from the association and are not reporting one.

What the council has committed to

Cllr Sandra Moore, BCP Council’s cabinet member for communities and partnerships, said the council had “moved as quickly as possible to secure its future and put plans in place for its reopening”, and that it looks forward to welcoming residents back in September.

Beyond that, the council’s position is that it will “engage with the community to explore how the building can best serve residents in the future”. No programme, no opening hours and no booking arrangements have been published yet. The council says further details will follow in the coming weeks.

What it means for you

If you ran a class or a group at Beaufort, or want to, there is nowhere yet to book it. The council’s own community centres page still lists the old association’s phone number and email address for the centre, which will not be the route in once the council is running it. Watch the news hub rather than that page for the reopening details.

If you need a hall in the meantime, the same council page lists eight other community centres on the Bournemouth side, including Townsend on Jewell Road, Strouden on Vanguard Road, Moordown on Coronation Avenue, Muscliff on Shillingstone Drive and The Phoebe Centre on Gloucester Road, each with its own booking contact.

If your child was at the pre-school or the all day care, that provision is not returning to Beaufort Road at all. The council says it helped families find alternatives at the time of the closure in April; anyone still looking can search local childcare through the council’s Family Information Directory.

We will report the confirmed reopening date and the first programme when the council publishes them. In the meantime, our guide to things to do in Bournemouth covers what is open now.