Melanie Whitlock receives  her card featuring 30 years of Awards

Our vice-chair, Melanie Whitlock and her family have recently decided to move to Edinburgh after living in Hammersmith for a long time, Melanie has been a stalwart of the Society for at least 38 years. She has been on the committee since the 1980’s, chairing the Society twice, with a long stint from 1984-1990 during which she created our Awards, and again from 2009-2012. She has in many ways been the backbone of the Society for nearly 40 years, a fact recognised in a civic honour in 2019.  We wish her the fondest of farewells.

You can read more about her time as Chair in two sections of the 50th anniversary review written at the end of her second tenure in 2012.  Our President, Prof. Hans Haenlein said a few words of appreciation at her recent leaving party, which are reproduced below:

Chairman Richard Winterton writes:

Melanie Whitlock has been one of the driving forces of the Hammersmith Society for over 30 years. 

The Hammersmith Society is a community amenity society which strives to protect and enhance the urban environment of Hammersmith: this ambition needs vigilance to keep abreast of the continual changes proposed for the borough, requiring time, tact and patience to meet with participants from the developer teams to negotiate the best way forward.

Melanie has devoted so much time representing the community to promote and support improvements and good ideas, and resist the bad ideas, for the borough. Melanie was chairman of the Hammersmith Society twice (1984-90, 2009-12), vice-chair for almost as long. She has been active in the demanding late-evening meeting regime of OPDC planning. She is a member of the Hammersmith Residents Working Party panel, which has been working on a new SPD for Hammersmith Town Centre, and is one of three LBHF commissioners working on the West King Street Town Hall redevelopment.

For over 20 years Hammersmith has been enjoying, and continues to undergo, a period of transformational redevelopment: as Hammersmith Society chairman Melanie prepared carefully considered and reasoned advice on countless major development proposals, providing a benchmark reference in planning debate which has won credibility and respect in the planning community.