Local authorities

From commercial buildings to residential flats, we have gained over ten years of experience in a range of contexts, working closely and building long standing relationships with local authorities.

Case study: London Borough of Lewisham, Grove Park Youth Club

Client: London Borough of Lewisham
Project type: commercial
Property type: decommissioned youth club
Duration: 3 years
Guardians: 14
Properties: 1
Inspections: 173
Client savings: > £28,000
Social impact: >1,500 hours of volunteering, or the equivalent of >£16.7k worth of social value

We partnered with London Borough of Lewisham and Grove Park Youth Club Building Preservation Trust in August 2018 to care for a decommissioned youth club. The loss of the youth club, and the youth services they provided, hit the Grove Park community hard. The Building Preservation Trust was founded by a group of locals with the aim of reviving the building and bringing it back to its former use. The trust reached out to Dot Dot Dot in 2018 after hearing about our work and social purpose.

Aside from living in and securing the building, our guardians contributed their voluntary hours to the renovation of the youth club. They arranged community clean-up days, put together plans for a community garden, wrote funding bids, recruited volunteers and supported stakeholder management.

After a successful handback to London Borough of Lewisham, the newly-restored youth club reopened its doors on 26th July 2021 for the first time in eight years. We’re proud to have played a key role in the process to revive a lost community asset and return it to its original purpose.

For me, the benefit of being a property guardian is that I live somewhere that doesn’t contribute to London’s housing crisis. We make good use of buildings that would otherwise stand empty or be developed, and I am able to live with others and together we are working in and contributing to the local community.

Killian Troy

BPT trustee, Grove Park local and former Dot Dot Dot guardian

Get in touch about securing your property

Do you have a building that will be empty for a minimum of three months or more? Get in touch with our team to discuss whether we can offer the right security solution for your asset.