Along with others, the Society’s activities have been severely curtailed during the government’s enforced lockdown. We’ve found a little solace in the popular Zoom video-conferencing application (used with appropriate security precautions), and on Monday this week, keeping to schedule, managed our first online committee meeting – with 75% attendance.

Online committee meeting

The committee decided that the Society should use some of its limited funds to make a donation of £1000 to Hammersmith residents in need of support at this difficult time, via our local charity and affiliate Hammersmith United Charities which represents an excellent model of giving relatively small grants to local groups which know what practical help is needed and target it accordingly. The donation will be distributed through their Community Coronavirus Appeal, which is run in conjunction with the Council. 

We have inevitably decided to postpone this summer’s AGM until government rules allow us to convene again. We’ll announce a new date when rules change.   The Spring Newsletter, which would normally be posted out in April, will be published on this website, as a series of articles released over the coming weeks, with summaries and links emailed to members as usual.

We hope to be in a position to at least make nominations for the 2020 Environment Awards by reviewing what material is available to us via photos, and we encourage you to submit nominations by email if you have a suitable development in mind.  We may not be able to visit them, or make a formal award until later in the year, but expect to be able to publish and consider the suitable nominations.

We continue to review planning and other issues in the borough in our splendid isolation, and we note that the LBHF planning system is still active, understandably at a slower pace.  Civic Voice notes in its press release that Section 78 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 (“lockdown”), which came into effect this week, allows local authorities to hold virtual planning meetings without additional notice via “remote means including (but not limited to) video conferencing, live webcast, and live interactive streaming” and are looking for feedback as to how this is working.  As of this writing, our council is considering how it might implement this, and has stated that the April planning meeting is cancelled.  Please contact us with your local planning experiences during this period and we’ll collate and feed back. 

Of course there is also the bigger picture around the Civic Voice Manifesto 2020-2023 campaigning for “accessible, balanced and collaborative’ (ABC) planning system with communities at the heart” which we have mentioned in several recent newsletters and continue to discuss both at committee and with the council.