How the Hub developed

Background

The Community Skills Hub in Waltham Cross has been leased to Community Alliance since 2009. Originally, it was an empty shop which used to be an amusement arcade and had been closed for several years previously. This formed an important part of the Waltham Cross Touchdown project that Community Alliance set up to make use of the growing amount of empty retail and office space in Waltham Cross High Street. Community Alliance provided the infrastructure support (including Wi-Fi access) and the groups worked from mobile phones hence the term ‘Touchdown’

What started as a short-term idea to super-charge the voluntary sector in Waltham Cross, turned into an eight-year project during which over 40 local charities, community agencies, volunteer groups and business start-ups either operated from or made use of, the empty space that Community Alliance managed.

Over the years new development of the office space into living accommodation and more take of retail units meant that Community Alliance took out a commercial five-year lease on the shop premises in 2018, including extensive refurbishment of the building. By this time, the ‘Next Step Employment Centre’ operated by Hertford Regional College in Waltham Cross, had closed and the main organisations using the Waltham Cross Touchdown space were training and employment support projects.

The idea of an accessible building that could operate a one-stop-shop approach to skills support, learning courses, training workshops, and employment and job search opportunities was launched as the Waltham Cross ‘Community Skills Hub.’

In 2023, the Community Skills Hub underwent an extensive refurbishment that the Government’s Levelling Up Fund funded in partnership with Broxbourne Council. On 27 September 2023, Cllr Paul Seeby formally reopened the Hub as the Waltham Cross ‘Community Hub.’