The One O’Clock Club offers a unique environment for pre-school children, where they can learn through play, accompanied by carers, whether they be parents, grandparents or childminders.

Overlooking Crystal Palace Park, the site boasts an unusually large, outside play area, complete with structures and houses, push-along toys and ride-on scooters and bikes. Inside, the club’s room boasts a variety of child-based activities which change on a daily basis. They include a number of table-based activities such as painting, drawing, arts, crafts and cookery as well as a small library, a dressing-up area, a play-kitchen and a ‘baby’ corner for new mums.

The facility gives pre-school children an opportunity to learn through play, acquiring skills which are the building blocks of early childhood.

The club has been running for almost 40 years and over that time has attracted generations of local families, highlighting its important role in the community. It is also an important, first port-of-call for new mums as well as being a sociable venue for mothers with toddlers and pre-school children.

Customers come from across five boroughs: Bromley, Croydon, Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham, bearing witness to the club’s broad, all-inclusive appeal, as a safe, secure, and welcoming environment for children and carers alike.

For the past eight years, the club has been operated by Mytime Active, the Bromley-based provider of leisure facilities and a social enterprise and charity.
Mytime Active is a leading, Bromley-based social enterprise which provides leisure and community services. In its nine year history, the charitable trust has invested more than £16m in facilities and services.

During the same period, it has operated the One O'Clock Club (OOCC), a community-led play centre for under 5's, at Crystal Palace. Whilst it has maintained this facility and service, it has invested nothing in those nine years.

At the beginning of 2012, it announced that 'the building was dilapidated' and that the club would be tendered. (Other options/alternatives uses will be considered)

Mytime Active continues to invest elsewhere. It recently invested £1m in its first month of taking on Birmingham City Council's public golf courses.

Mytime Active claims it does not want to close the club, a popular and well-utilised facility, which has been in existence for nearly 40 years. The company has made it clear that the OOCC is not 'sustainable' to them. It has never made a profit in those nine years.

Why is this charitable trust- with an apparent remit to provide service in the community and in possession of retained funds of £3.5m- continuing to neglect this valuable community resource?

The club is run by a small team of professionals whose long-standing expertise is top notch and who pride themselves on offering a personable service, year-round and throughout all the school holidays.