Context : The discovery of brown dwarfs ( BDs ) in the solar neighborhood and young star clusters has helped to constraint the low-mass end of the stellar mass function and the initial mass function .
We use data of the Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea ( VVV ) , a near-infrared ( NIR ) multi-wavelength ( ZYJH K _ { s } ) multi-epoch ( K _ { s } ) ESO Public Survey mapping the Milky Way bulge and southern Galactic plane to search for nearby BDs .

Aims : The ultimate aim of the project is to improve the completeness of the census of nearby stellar and substellar objects towards the Galactic bulge and inner disk regions .

Methods : Taking advantage of the homogeneous sample of VVV multi-epoch data , we identified stars with high proper motion ( \geq 0.1″yr ^ { -1 } ) , and then selected low-mass objects using NIR colors .
We searched for a possible parallax signature using the all available K _ { s } band epochs .
We set some constraints on the month-to-year scale K _ { s } band variability of our candidates , and even searched for possible transiting companions .
We obtained NIR spectra to properly classify spectral type and then the physical properties of the final list of candidates .

Results : We report the discovery of VVV BD001 , a new member of the local volume-limited sample ( within 20 pc from the sun ) with well defined proper motion , distance , and luminosity .
The spectral type of this new object is an L5 \pm 1 , unusually blue dwarf .
The proper motion for this BD is PM ( \alpha ) =-0.5455 \pm 0.004 ″yr ^ { -1 } , PM ( \delta ) =-0.3255 \pm 0.004 ″yr ^ { -1 } , and it has a parallax of 57 \pm 4 mas which translates into a distance of 17.5 \pm 1.1 pc . VVV BD001 shows no evidence of variability ( \Delta K _ { s } ¡0.05mag ) over two years , especially constrained on a six month scale during the year 2012 .

Conclusions :