Our Story

History of our charity

We have been established as a charity since 1990. In the late 1980’s a group of local residents approached the then Avon County Council to discuss the future of a former Victorian secondary school situated on Beauley Road, which was surplus to requirements and lying empty and becoming quite derelict. The residents wanted to ensure the site was kept for community use for the benefit of local residents, rather than demolished and more houses built.

After lengthy negotiations the Council agreed that the residents, once constituted into an association, could take on the 999 year lease of the site for the sum of £1.

Initially known as the Southville Community Development Association, the organisation became a registered charity in 1990 to enable applications for grant funding, as well as a company limited by guarantee, allowing income generation through commercial services.  The charity changed its name to ‘BS3 Community Development’ in 2018 to better reflect its area of charitable benefit.

After one of the three main structures had been converted from a school into a community centre, it became known as ‘The Southville Centre’, which has been the home of the charity ever since.  

A more recent stage in the history of the charity began with the acquisition of a former Methodist Chapel in Bedminster, where we built our second community venue, the Chessel Centre.

Today BS3 Community Development runs both the Southville and the Chessel Centres, as well as working out of the Phillip Street Chapel on a Tuesday, the Methodist Church on British Road on a Friday and the Ashton Vale Community Centre on a Monday and seeks to reach across the whole of the BS3 postcode area of South Bristol.