Dear members, followers, and friends, As the year draws to a close I’m writing to thank you for your support and send you best wishes for the holiday season and for 2025. Reflecting back, 2024 has seen a huge amount happening here, lots achieved and plenty of planning for campaigns, events and publications yet to come. A year of firsts We’ve seen a great variety of buildings listed in 2024 – some of which are pictured below – they cover a wide date range; from a traditional 1915 cabmen’s shelter, to the flamboyant Egyptian-style Sphinx Hill – a recent subject of our “Me and My House” article in the C20 Magazine, only completed in 1999 and now the youngest listed building in the UK. We have also had two notable ‘firsts’ – the first listing of an example of outsider art, and the first C21st designated landscape. Our caseworkers have been busy both pushing for this protection, and ensuring that subsequent changes to buildings preserve what’s special about them. A new and increasing challenge has been providing help and guidance to building owners alarmed to discover that their buildings have the now-notorious reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) as part of their construction, and we continue to focus on the best ways to retrofit buildings to improve environmental performance. We’ve run more overseas members events than ever before (including trips to Italy, Portugal, and Poland)  and we reckon that our hybrid-format lecture programme had over five thousand attendees, with nearly 1000 people coming on in-person tours to buildings with us. In 2025, we’ll have a similarly full programme, both in the UK and going as far as Chicago, and we’re taking the big step of appointing a new staff member to join us here in the office in Farringdon and focus on events for the first time. Please spread the word, and if you think you might like to be that person (3 days a week) please apply.   Looking ahead It is always hard to predict what lies ahead in terms of future threats and casework (I am sure there will be many challenges), but undoubted 2025 highlights will include three new books published with Batsford – 100 Sports Buildings, C20 Seaside Architecture and Cooling Towers, so look out for those, and for events related to each of them. We’ll also be increasing our fundraising activities in 2025 – building on the successful launch of our Patrons programme this year, and I’m delighted that newly elected trustee Colin Mitchell has been appointed to lead on that with me and our Chair, Hugh Pearman. We have made very modest increases to our subscription rates for 2025, as we want membership to remain accessible, but this means that – vital though your member subscriptions are to our work – core membership fees now only generate approximately 35 percent of our costs. If you are able to increase your level of support either by becoming a Patron or by donating to the on-going Elain Harwood Memorial Fund, we would be extremely grateful, and promise that your money will be put to very good use. With best wishes and a Happy Christmas from all at the Society. Catherine Croft