Former building safety programme director Neil O’Connor and Royal Academy of Engineering president James Rufus also handed honours
Nicholas Boys Smith, Create Streets founder and chair of Office for Place, has also been awarded an MBE for services to planning and design in the New Year Honours List. Boys Smith is also a Building the Future commissioner.
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Describing the award as a “lovely surprise”, he said it was a testament to the team at Create Streets, advisors at Office for Place and volunteers from community and neighbourhood groups which he had worked with.
Patty Hopkins, the co-founder of Hopkins Architects, has been given an OBE for services to architecture.
Hopkins founded the practice behind the London 2012 Olympics Velodrome and Westminster tube station in 1976 with her husband Michael Hopkins, who was knighted in 1995 and passed away in June last year.
The couple were jointly awarded the RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture in 1994.
Neil O’Connor, former director of the building safety programme at the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has received an Order of the Bath for services to building safety.
Meanwhile, Graham Paterson, former executive director of Glasgow-based contractor City Building, has been named an OBE for services to equality and inclusion in construction.
Other OBE recipients include Royal Academy of Engineering president James Rufus, for services to engineering, education and energy, and Helen Zammit-Wilson, director of the National Valuation Unit at the Valuation Office Agency, for services to the surveying profession.
In the energy sector, Lee McDonough, the director general for net zero, nuclear and international at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, has received an Order of the Bath for services to energy and climate.
Chair of the Offshore Wind Acceleration Taskforce Timothy Pick has also been handed an OBE for services to offshore wind energy.
Also recognised in the honours list was Society of Black Architects co-founder Audley English, who received an MBE for services to architecture and sustainability.
English graduated from the Architectural Association as the UK’s first West Indian architect and founded a black-led architectural practice which designed innovative social housing, sustainable schemes. He said he was “deeply touched and honoured to receive this unexpected accolade”.
Planning consultant Helen Fadipe has also been handed an OBE for services to town planning.
Fadipe is the founder and chair of BAME Planners Network, an initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the planning profession in the UK and Ireland.
“I feel very honoured, privileged and inspired that my contribution to the planning profession has been recognised,” she said.
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