Redbridge centre

The redevelopment of our Redbridge centre will enable Guide Dogs to deliver new skills, information and support services and extend our reach to a greater number of people living with sight loss in the south-east region of the UK. This centre will provide a much needed 'hub', creating opportunities for more engagement with the wider community.

The current centre

Guide Dogs Redbridge Centre outside view of the entrance

The current buildings and facilities at Redbridge are very outdated and expensive to maintain. It's only possible to offer a limited number and type of services to people in the area. For example, Redbridge is not able to provide services such as orientation and mobility services, which means people must travel to other centres such as London or Hertfordshire to access this support.

The current facilities are also not set up to be able to implement our new Standardised Training for Excellent Partnerships (STEP) programme for training guide dogs efficiently and effectively.

The new build and vision

The redeveloped Redbridge centre will provide a modern and welcoming purpose-built facility enabling us to better support people with sight loss and their families, offering a range of services tailored to every individual's need.

It will enable us to:

Increase the number of orientation and mobility interventions by over 230 each year
Support more than 120 new children and young people with sight loss and their families

The specialised facilities, such as indoor training and all-weather fully covered outdoor training areas, will create an enhanced training environment to facilitate a better learning environment for our dogs and staff. That, combined with our improved STEP programme for training guide dogs, means that we can create more successful guide dog partnerships.

It will contribute to the delivery of:

Over 78 new life-changing guide dog partnerships per year
Support more than a further 100 new partnerships throughout the south-east per year
It will enable the creation of at least 26 buddy and companion dog partnerships each year