When you’re buying or renting a home, you’re not just choosing a house. You’re choosing a place to live: a community where you can lay down roots, make friends, spend your time, send your children to school, take a walk, go out for dinner or see familiar faces in your local café.  

At Urban Village, we recognise that a sense of community is a key part of what we offer to our clients. We called ourselves ‘Urban Village’ because that’s exactly what the areas we cover are: these aren’t faceless London suburbs, they’re thriving community centres, villages tucked away in a sprawling metropolis. When people move to Herne Hill, or Dulwich, or Brixton, they’re not just getting a beautiful house, on a nice street: they’re walking into a way of life. 

Being an active part of that community has always been important to us. It is, after all, our team’s community too: it’s where we work, eat, drink, walk our dogs and – for many of us – live. That’s why we’ve always thrown ourselves into community life, making sure we support South East London’s ‘villages’ as much as we can. To date, we’ve donated over £50,000 to local schools and charities: here are some of the initiatives we’ve been taking part in:  

Keeping the Ruskin Park Paddling Pool open 

When Ruskin Park’s much-loved paddling pool was set to be closed in 2015 due to lack of funding, there was an outcry in the local area, and a community partnership between Friends of Ruskin Park, and Lambeth Council alongside residents and local businesses quickly came together – including Urban Village – to save it. As the main business sponsor of the pool, we donated £10,000 towards its refurbishment. With a new plant room, more water jets, repairs to the surface of the pool and a dedicated mains water supply, the paddling pool is now clean, safe and ready to keep many young residents and visitors to the park entertained every Summer. We also commissioned and paid for talented artists to create an urban mural in Ruskin Park to cover over what used to be a wall covered in random graffiti. 

We’re pleased to update that our beloved Ruskin Park Paddling Pool has just reopened and we’re confident that our latest fundraising campaign efforts will see the pool open now for years to come. If you’re a local to the area and would like to support our ongoing efforts and the day to day running throughout the Summer, then drop a message to info@urbanvillagehomes.com.  

If you follow us on social media, you’ll know that we are big dog lovers here at Urban Village, so naturally we were proud to sponsor this year’s Ruskin Bark Dog Show. The event was a great way to bring the community together, with entertainment, workshops, stalls and, of course, the dog show itself, which included categories such as waggiest tail, best veteran (5 years and over) and best dog/owner lookalike. We also support the Ruskin Park Fete every year, and always donate prizes to the fete’s raffle. 

Helping South East London to breathe easy 

If you’ve spent any time in South East London, you’ll have seen our pink bicycles on the streets – our team’s emission-free alternative to travel to and from property viewings. When cycling isn’t practical, we use our green machine instead: a fully-electric BMW i3, which also happens to be 85% recyclable.  

Want to find out more about the role we play in the community and why it means so much to us? Pop into our office on Denmark Hill for a chat, give us a call on 020 3519 9121 or email us info@urbanvillagehomes.com.