St Oswald's Centre

St. Oswald's Centre is a community charity based in Bruntsfield, Edinburgh. The building was acquired through a Community Asset Transfer in 2021, enabled by the Scottish Land Fund, putting this historic building into community hands.

In the period up to and after the asset transfer, the Trustees of St Oswald’s carried out extensive community consultations. What emerged was strong support for the creation of a community hub – that, whilst still providing important wrap around care for local schoolchildren, would also seek to serve all sections of the local community.

Another key issue was that the Centre itself was in need of significant repairs and upgrading.

It was at this stage that St Oswald’s sought support via the Accelerate Programme to help develop a coherent and realistic Business Plan that would provide a framework for moving forward – with the priority being on the Centre’s longer term sustainability.

We helped deliver a business plan that focused on balancing the need to secure funding for repairs/upgrades and to ‘open the doors’ as quickly as they could to get the community actively engaged with the Centre.

St Oswald's opened in November 2025 and, up to June 2026, there have been over 10,000 ‘unique visits’ to the centre, accessing its range of facilities. They are now also renting space to other organisations.

The Centre hopes to have these plans in place over the next twelve months – all contributing to making St Oswald’s a key community hub in the area – as well as contributing to its longer term sustainability.