Redbridge centre

The current centre

The current buildings and facilities at Redbridge are very outdated and expensive to maintain.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 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
• Support over 144 new My Sighted Guide partnerships

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