Mayor presents Environment Award 2022 to Flanagan Lawrence [Jason Flanagan & Barbara Twine]

Mayor presents Nancye Goulden Award 2022 to Elder Press Cafe [Lindsay and Andrew Elder]

Mayor presents Jane Mercer Award 2022 to Green Project SB [ Maria Helena Scott ]

Mayor presents Jane Mercer Award 2022 to Green Project SB

Mayor and Nicholas Boys Smith at AGM 2022

NB Smith + Chairman Richard Winterton

The Palladium [ Photo: @sbcalling ]

Palladium Plaque

Elder Press Cafe

Sawley Road – Green Project nominated for Jane Mercer Award 2022

Hammersmith Society Chairman + former chairs

Full House at AGM 2022

Andy Slaughter MP at AGM 2022

Members view presentation boards at AGM 2022

members of Green Project at AGM 2022

(AGM Photos: Franco Chen. Click for full-size versions)

Summary

‘Gentle Density’

Our guest speaker was Nicholas Boys Smith, of CreateStreets, and the CreateStreets Foundation, who gave an inspiring presentation, showing why we don’t need 55 storey towers to solve housing problems, and that real people prefer what CreateStreets refer to as “gentle density”.

The Environment Award was given to The Palladium on Shepherds Bush Green. We visited it earlier this year and were impressed with the design quality provided by the same architects, Flanagan Lawrence, who transformed the Dorsett next door, and to whom we also gave our Environment Award in 2015.  This area of the borough has seen significant improvements in the last few years, and we hope that the hotel currently under construction on the North side of the Dorsett lives up to the high standards set.

Unfortunately this year there were no projects of the right type or scale nominated for the Tom Ryland Award for Conservation.

The Nancye Goulden Award was given to the Elder Press Café which recently opened in South Black Lion Lane, W6. This conversion has been carried out with unusual care and sensitivity – the shop window is retained to bring life and light which animates this little street and the builder’s yard is brought back to life as an outside seating area with fine new timber gates thrown open during the day.

For the first time in several years we presented the Jane Mercer Award for “proactive co-operation, collaboration and communication”. The Green Project, Shepherds Bush provided exactly this, an initiative setup by local residents to make the neighbourhood around Sawley Road W12 greener, and at the same time to bring the community together.

Wooden spoons were awarded to the council for a failure to fully engage with their own green agenda by keeping new street trees alive and overseeing the generally inadequate tree pits partly responsible, which were similarly awarded in 2013, 2014, and 2015; and for an unfortunate lack of inclusivity afforded by the King Street Cycleway, C9, with everyone but cyclists losing out unnecessarily, some significantly.