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(AGM Photos: Franco Chen. Click for full-size versions)
We were delighted to announce our 2023 Awards at the AGM at 245 Hammersmith Road on Thursday 29th June, with the Awards introduced by vice-chairman Richard Winterton and kindly presented by our guest speaker Andy Slaughter MP. Members and supporters were provided excellent hospitality for which we would like to thank the 245 staff, and of course our very own Robert Iggulden and his many assistants.
Award details and the associated narrative are posted on our 2023 Awards page together with a link to the updated spreadsheet of all Awards since 1990, and matching interactive Awards map. More AGM photos and the administrative documents are posted on the dedicated 2023 AGM page.
After a rapid run though the mandatory AGM procedures, approving the 2022 minutes, 2023 accounts, and committee re-elections, our guest speaker needed no introduction. As our local MP, with Twitter handle @Hammersmithandy, he has over 40 years experience as local councillor, deputy then leader in 1996, and an MP since 2005. He talked about the various battles over the West Ken. estates that were originally given over to CAPCO for redevelopment as part of Earls Court, then reclaimed, the continuing issues with Charing Cross Hospital, the Bridge, flooding, and then onto large developments and the general pace of redevelopment, with a particular discussion on Shepherds Bush Market. He also mentioned that with the recently confirmed electoral boundary changes, his constituency is, not for the first time, being radically reshaped to lose the northern half to Ealing, while he could gain Chiswick in the new ‘Hammersmith & Chiswick’ constituency should he be elected next time. He subsequently answered a number of questions from the audience including a topical one about Thames Water.
This year the main Environment Award was given to The Hoxton on Shepherds Bush Green. An addition to its own merits discussed in detail in the narrative, the building achieves the unusual feat of making a slightly awkward red brick building adjacent – Lawn House – fit better into the streetscape, so that the whole of ‘The Lawn‘ can be seen as a piece, perhaps the most characterful stretch of buildings in the borough, having won 2 further awards from us: the Dorsett (2015), and the Palladium (2022).
We again presented the Jane Mercer Award for “proactive co-operation, collaboration and communication” to a community gardening project – this time Askew in Bloom . The group shares some of the same enthusiastic members as last year’s winner, the Green Project, but this project has been running independently since 2019. It brings daily joy to what used to be a fairly ordinary W12 thoroughfare, and they are now spreading the word to other parts of the borough, starting with Dalling Road. More power to their collective elbows – and fewer asphalt tree pits!
Unfortunately, this year there were no projects of the right type, scale or quality nominated for the Tom Ryland Award for Conservation, or the smaller Nancye Goulden Award. While there are many buildings under construction, as evidenced by the red lights atop the many cranes on our skyline, few have been completed recently, for which we might reasonably blame the pandemic.
Wooden spoons were again awarded to the council for:
Risking keeping members and guests from the bar, Richard Farthing summarised the year with a canter through his Chairman’s annual report, followed by the offer of Q&A. However the bar proved an irresistible draw, the convivial reception lasting until the building’s curfew.
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