community centre: current situation
The Bernera Community Association (BCA) is a Not-for-profit Charity run by community volunteers and is responsible for managing and maintaining the Community Centre, which houses—among other things—the Community Café & Shop, the Bernera Museum, the Community Hall and the Gym.
We are currently dealing with a costly ongoing legal case which has received a lot of press coverage (see links below). As a result, we have been completely overwhelmed and humbled by the incredible generosity of so many people who have responded to our plight.
We have had over 13,000 donations, resulting in a total raised of £200,000.
This means that our legal costs, along with the community centre upkeep, will now be fully covered by the donations received—something we honestly could never have imagined when this journey began.
On behalf of everyone at the BCA, we would like to offer a huge and heartfelt THANK YOU for your continued support, generosity and kindness. To say that the response has been humbling would be a huge understatement. The generosity shown by so many people—including those who have given despite having very little themselves—has meant more to us than we could ever adequately put into words. Every single donation, message and gesture of support has made a difference.
We also appreciate that people will naturally have strong feelings and opinions regarding the situation. However, we respectfully ask everyone to continue to show kindness and respect towards all those involved in this ongoing case. Whatever people’s personal views may be, we hope we can continue to conduct ourselves with dignity and compassion.
Any further donations received will go towards the ongoing upkeep of the centre and to supporting the community. If you wish to make a donation please click on the button below:
our island community
You can read more about our ongoing legal case at these links:
We generate income from:
Membership Fees
Proceeds from Café and Shop sales
Room and Hall rental
Gym fees
Public events such as Social Evenings, Meal Nights, Big Breakfasts, etc.*
Private events such as Wedding Receptions, Birthday Parties and Funeral Teas
Raffles and Donations
*If you have an idea for an event or would like to organise one yourself, we’d love to hear from you!
We receive grants, funding and support from:
Our outgoings
The Community Centre costs around £25k per year to run, which includes heating, electricity, insurance and general maintenance. In addition, we incur one-off payments when we purchase equipment for new initiatives or need to replace worn and defective items throughout the Centre, such as a new boiler or a running machine for the Gym.
We are also fortunate to be able to employ a part-time Handyman for maintenance work in and around the Centre, as well as a part-time Administrator for admin tasks.
However, the income we currently generate does not cover all of our outgoings, so we greatly rely on grants, funding and other external support. The closure of our local primary school in 2020 had a dramatic effect on our incomings, as we lost the Council’s hire of the hall for school PE sessions. If anyone therefore has any ideas of ways of raising much-needed funds, we would love to hear from you.
The Bernera Community Association is a company limited by guarantee (Company Number SC200316) and is recognised by the Scottish Charity Regulator as a Scottish Charity (Reference SC010113)