Throughout 2024 we’re celebrating 50 years of Pollard Thomas Edwards and while we’ve just had a party with hundreds of our friends, clients and colleagues, the biggest birthday present we’ve had this year was hosting the Neave Brown Award jury. The RIBA and its judges visited our shortlisted Dover Court project last week.

When we started out in 1974, our work centred upon refurbishing and converting terraced housing into flats for social housing tenants. Our first project was making new homes in a house - 15 Colville Terrace in Westminster – which had recently been bought from the ‘slum landlord’ Peter Rachman by the Notting Hill Housing Trust. It kickstarted our practice’s long-term relationship with both social housing and working with – making good and upgrading – existing buildings.

At Dover Court, where we delivered 70 new homes carefully threaded into the postwar estate, we also refurbished an existing tower and converting its ground floor to host a community centre. Anyone who knows the project will be aware of the huge transformation applied to the grounds as well. Working with landscape architect Farrer Huxley, we not only improved the open spaces, but by setting our new pedestrian routes and lighting, we were able to fashion a safe and welcoming journey home for all residents.

Dover Court was made possible by drawing upon our own experience: 50 years of home-making nous matters on projects like this. It’s also partly down to the culture we have built at PTE in that time. At our party last week, we were lucky to have two of our three founding partners (Roger Pollard and Bill Thomas) and our second generation of owners (Andrew Beharrell, Teresa Borsuk, Steve Fisher and Steve Chance) as guests. Both of these leadership teams were driven by a desire to be 'home makers' and embraced the necessary care that comes with such a responsibility.

Now, a third generation of leaders and company owners has picked up that batten and looked at how we need to adapt PTE for the future. As partner Carl Vann said on the night, ‘we talk about home-making not in the sense of domesticity but by using a more expansive meaning; one of creating homes and spaces and buildings of all kinds for communities to flourish….homes (of course) to live in, but also homes for businesses to thrive, homes for communities and faith groups to gather in, and homes for children to learn and play in.’

It is also why, in our 50th year we are working alongside housing charity Crisis to support a number of their initiatives to end homelessness.

And it is why we are, quite frankly, over the moon to be shortlisted for RIBA’s Neave Brown Award - for social housing - this year. It is probably the most consequential award our industry has.