Making every day easier for people with hearing loss
The charity of the year chosen by Capital Business Centre in Croydon is also a customer. Croydon Hearing turned to our serviced office solution to enable them to concentrate on helping people with hearing difficulties in the borough – rather than spending their time sorting out problems with their office, as they had done previously. The move has coincided with a restructuring of how they offer their services, with an even greater focus on support tailored to the needs of the people they help.
More than 40 years supporting people in Croydon with hearing difficulties
The Croydon Hard of Hearing Project was founded in 1982 by Frankie Gunns, now Life President, as a small organisation to train volunteers in providing support and practical help to hearing aid wearers in the borough. She also developed social groups for the hard of hearing to try and combat social isolation, supporting anyone over the age of 18 experiencing hearing loss across all 34 square miles of the borough of Croydon.
Over the years it grew organically with the demand, with a change of name to Croydon Hearing when it became a registered company in 2000. It now helps around 1,800 people a year.
Co-Managers Vanessa Ledgister and Karen Barber had both previously worked in the corporate sector: Karen was with the BBC for 27 years and Vanessa worked for a different serviced office provider in Mayfair. For different reasons they both reached a point where they wanted a change in direction – and found Croydon Hearing, leading to new chapters in the charity world.
Practical support to make the everyday easier 
“We provide a variety of services to support and empower people who experience hearing loss, as well as encouraging their support system,” explains Vanessa. “We offer integrated care systems: we have an element of health, an element of social care, as well as our charitable arm.
“On the NHS health side, we offer aftercare for NHS hearing aids, providing free batteries in the community and a place where local people can visit so that they don’t have to trek to the hospital. We also help people navigate that pathway into health services. We can do the referrals, which helps the GPs with their workload, as well as eliminating the need for people to get stuck waiting for GP appointment, which also reduces the time they’re stuck in their current situation, which can be very isolating.”
“You can lose your hearing in lots of different way,” adds Karen. “We have clients who’ve lost their hearing in childbirth, through the military where they’ve suffered from loud explosions, especially back in the day when there wasn’t so much sort of protection, musicians…
“But no matter how they lost their hearing, they all face common problems getting through the everyday. It can be answering the telephone, hearing the television, hearing alarms, hearing other people speak, interacting with people, going into shops, understanding what’s going on in the world around them. Our clients experience multiple layering of difficulties, and we just try to make their life easier.
“We explain how to get the best functioning out of their hearing aids and how to maintain them in between their visits to us. Working with the sensory impairment team in Croydon Council we also offer assistive equipment for the home, such as smoke alarms that vibrate, flashing doorbells, telephones with different tones and volumes so they can actually hear their relatives, their friends, the GP.
“It’s amazing how simple, everyday tasks like these can be so hindered if you have a hearing loss. We try and eliminate all those unnecessary worries and difficulties that they come across in everyday life.”
Support to stop social isolation 
One of the major benefits of the services offered by Croydon Hearing is that it can help reduce the sense of isolation that so often comes with hearing loss. “For a lot of people, a diagnosis of a hearing loss can really be a huge ageing marker for them, even though not all hearing loss is age related,” explains Vanessa. “A lot of people think, ‘I’m deaf, I’ve got a disability’ – which can have a huge effect on mental health.
“It’s also a very frustrating condition, and it can be further isolating if the people around them can’t adapt to support that. So, a lot of the work we do is about how to cope with a hearing loss – to be aware of what services are available, but also to support their care network, whether that’s carers, friends, family, neighbours.”
“We try and reach out to everyone who can support the individual, as well as empowering the individual themselves to say ‘Hold on a second, I have a hearing loss. Could you just say that again? Could you speak a bit louder or a bit clearer?’ Because it’s not always about volume – sometimes it’s more clarity,” adds Karen.
Positive feedback informing service provision
Both Vanessa and Karen argue that Croydon Hearing is unique. “No other hearing loss charity offers the range of services that we do,” says Vanessa. “We like to think our USP is time. We try to afford each client enough of it during our appointments so they can really understand their hearing aids/assistive equipment or the advice and information we are imparting to enable them to live a life as fulfilled as possible.”
The charity develops its services in line with client need, and this has created a virtuous circle. “We get very positive feedback about how much we’ve changed our clients’ lives, how much we’ve given them their confidence back, how they feel able to return to the workplace or just go and hear their grandchildren screaming or hear the dog barking or hear a bird outside,” shares Karen. “From hearing the dripping of the tap in the kitchen to being able to return to work – the whole range of things that they are able to do with our help and assistance is truly heartening. It’s wonderful.
“We share the feedback with the entire team as the entire team is responsible for that feedback. Whether it’s the person who does the home visits or the clinicians in the surgeries that people come to – we all take a part in helping the clients to feel listened to.”
The ongoing fundraising challenge 
The biggest business challenge for Croydon Hearing is always fundraising: “We have a grant from the NHS and our contract with Croydon Council,” says Vanessa. “We also have a membership scheme for our clients and supporters, which is just £20 per year and includes a magazine, with news about the charity and hearing health in general.
“Then we go for small grants and pots of money locally that are created to support local people, as well as the bigger ones, like the National Lottery or different pots that are set aside for charitable endeavours.”
A turnkey workspace solution that enables the charity to focus on helping people
Being chosen by Capital Business Centre in Croydon as the charity of the year has consolidated Vanessa and Karen’s feelings about the warmth and support they have felt since they first visited to view potential office space. “From our first visit it was like a warm hug,” recalls Vanessa.
Having previously worked in the serviced office sector, Vanessa argued that it would provide a better solution for the charity almost as soon as she joined: “I championed serviced offices all along because I knew how much easier it is not having to worry about utility bills, or refuse collection or even the toilets.”
A combination of restructuring how best to offer their services to meet client need as a result of lockdown and one problem too many at their previous office proved the business case. “It helped that the charity was evolving,” recalls Karen. “We used to see our clients in our office. The pandemic made us stop and pause and think about the direction we wanted to go in. We agreed it would suit our clients better if we went to them, so we no longer needed as big a space.
“But we did need a good, solid, warm, dry, friendly base that the team can sit in – and we didn’t have that in our old office.”
Having made the move, Karen can’t believe how much easier the all-inclusive Capital Space offering is: “The whole turnkey offering is just lovely. Vanessa and I don’t get calls on a Sunday night because there’s water flooding through the ceiling. It just feels light. We still have a responsibility for the charity, but we can do charity work now instead of sorting out problems with our office.
“I used to have to look after all the utility bills and everything like that; I don’t have to do any of that anymore. If something isn’t working, we just pick up the phone and within 15 minutes, someone’s sorting it out.
“We don’t have to pay for parking, which we used to rack up quite a few bills with, having to park on main roads all the time. It’s just really nice.
“The centre management team is really friendly, but it’s also the community. We don’t know everybody, but we know enough people to go, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’. We walk past their offices, we speak to people, so it feels like a little village. It’s brilliant. I don’t know about Vanessa, but I’m never moving!”
Building foundations for a stronger future
The last few years have been dominated by building essential foundations to secure the future of the charity. “As well as moving into Capital Business Centre in Croydon, we’ve completed a major IT upgrade and installed a new CRM; we’ve been investing in the future of the organisation,” says Vanessa. “Being in the charity sector, our key aim is to survive, but also to make the charity stronger. I’ve always said that whenever I leave it – whether that’s in a year, 10 years or 20 years – I want it to be in a better position than when I came to it.”
One of the immediate plans is to trial hearing cafes this year. “There is huge emotional isolation with hearing loss, and this can be heightened with a simple trip to a café, because there’s lots of noise,” says Karen. “They’ve often got hard floors and surfaces, the steamer for the cappuccinos is going on, people are clattering all round.
“We want to create a non-judgmental environment filled with empathy, where people can come. We’re working with one of the venues where we do our initial hearing tests, the Selsdon Community Clubhouse, who have said they’re happy for us to use their kitchen so we can offer free tea, coffee, cake and, biscuits. It’s a venue that is familiar to all our clients so we hope they will feel confident to be able to come and join us.
“It’s just one of the projects we’ve got in the pipeline for this year – I’m sure there’ll be others!”
The management team at Capital Business Centre in Croydon is looking forward to supporting Croydon Hearing, their chosen charity, across 2026.
