Hammersmith Weekly,
5th November 2023

Today we announce Hammersmith Weekly, an email containing a roundup of news focussed on our shared interest in the built and natural environment in Hammersmith. Responding to feedback from our continuous member survey and the related AGM announcement that we no longer intend to print newsletters in pre-pandemic form, it’s a pick of the week, curated and concise version of selected additions to our Local and Affiliate news, and new Architecture and Construction news pages over the last 7 days, plus excerpts of any of our own articles published in the week. For completeness, we’ve added our upcoming diary events and selected Tweets addressing relevant matters of interest for Hammersmith and nearby.

We’ll continue to send our normal Society update emails accompanied by editorial for members and supporters when we publish our own articles; Weekly is a separate and optional email to save you trawling through so many of the available websites and emails. You can expect a dozen or so short curated excerpts in a weekly email, with links to the source websites for the full stories – example adjacent. Please consider supporting the third party sources directly if you’re interested in their content. Sign up here

A reminder of how our local news page works: where available, we automatically syndicate news from the websites of our affiliate organisations, plus a number of other relevant local and nearby public sources, including mention of ‘Hammersmith’, ‘OPDC’, ‘Old Oak’ or ‘Shepherds Bush’ in Parliament and by the GLA, and Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s Cabinet, Economy, Arts, Sports, and Public realm PAC, plus Planning committee feeds.

As the example adjacent shows, we’ve been testing it on ourselves and refining it for a month or two now, and recent topics have included: TfL funding, several questions in the House about the funding of HS2 and Hammersmith bridge, Council cabinet and planning meeting updates, London Forum updates on local planning reform, matters that affect London in the King’s speech in parliament, the Leaning Lady statue (to which we pledged £500), an update on Fulham Town Hall, improvements to Google Maps to include safer cycling routes, updates on OPDC approval of more 55 storey towers, threats to London parks from commercial exploitation, an update from Coningham police panel, Wormwood Scrubs PSPO, and Brackenbury area flooding. An archive is kept here, so you can see what it’s all about.

Sign up

If you ARE already a member or supporter receiving our emails, please go to an email we’ve sent you – any will do – and click on the “update preferences” link in the footer. This will take you to a personalised page where MailChimp will offer to send you an update email, so you can add Hammersmith Weekly to your preferences, like so:

Subscription options

Updating your preference is unfortunately a little convoluted so as to make sure you’re updating your own and not someone else’s, plus GDPR constraints which mean we can’t just send it to you without your permission.

If you’re NOT already a member or supporter, subscribing to our emails, please sign up here.

The news page itself automatically updates a few times a day, allowing you to check whenever you want. Too long or too short? There’s a shorter version on the homepage, in the sidebar to the right, with one item per source.  If you already know about, and use RSS feeds to keep up to date, you can subscribe to the work-in-progress curated feed that will be the source for the next Weekly.

We’re still testing different methods to provide relevant Tweets from our account @HammersmithSoc at Twitter, or ‘X’, as we must now call it. Twitter remains a useful source of information for us, despite efforts to monetise access to it under Musk’s ownership, coupled with remarkably relentless efforts to thwart the longstanding open access; our fuller feed may reappear on the website if and when new access methods settle down.

The email is currently scheduled for delivery on Sunday evenings – we’d particularly like to know if there’s a better day or time, or if we’re missing an useful source. Sign up, and let us know what you think.