A Meet-up in a Distillery and Funding for Homelessness and Gunnersbury Park

Report back from Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick

Andy Slaughter, the Chancellor and Co-founders at Sipsmith Distillery

October 10, 2025

It was wonderful to welcome the Chancellor to the constituency this week with a visit to Sipsmith Distillery in Chiswick. The visit was in celebration of the UK-India trade deal which will generate 7,000 jobs across the UK with 2,591 of those in London. It was a wonderful day meeting with co-founders Sam Galsworthy and Jared Brown to see the distillery in action.

More good news from the Treasury this week with an announcement made on Friday confirming Hounslow Council will receive £121,335 from the government’s £84 million uplift toward homelessness and rough-sleeping funding. The money for Hounslow Council will go toward helping families in temporary accommodation as well as to enhance existing recovery and treatment services for people sleeping rough or at risk of homelessness.

I also received notice this week that the Department for Culture Media and Sport are awarding Gunnersbury Park Museum £147,309 as part of the government’s Museum Renewal Fund. The funding is designed to improve access to collections and support community and educational programmes. The investment is wonderful news for Gunnersbury Park Museum and Chiswick residents alike.

This week Reverend Martine Oborne, Vicar of St Michael’s Church in Chiswick, wrote a fantastic article for the Guardian on the appointment of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally. The article gives an overview of the challenges ahead for Bishop Sarah, but Rev Martine Oborne is optimistic that Bishop Sarah has the intelligence, courage and compassion to meet this head on.

On Friday morning, along with Ben Coleman, MP for Chelsea and Fulham, I was delighted to attend Hammersmith Hospital to visit their Renal and Haematology Triage Unit – a pilot emergency department for sickle cell sufferers in north-west London. This unit is one of seven across England that provide emergency treatment for people with sickle cell disease.

The unit provides pain relief and treatment to a very serious but under-resourced disease, and it would be great to see the Unit receive NHS funding to become a permanent service within Hammersmith Hospital.

Andy Slaughter and Ben Coleman MP with staff outside the Renal and Haematology Triage Unit at Hammersmith Hospital

This weekend I was grateful to be invited along to the opening of the new south extension at Chiswick Rugby Club. The extension itself has created new changing rooms as well as other improvements to the facilities at the club along with an upgrade to the grass pitches. Chiswick Rugby Club has a wonderful history in Chiswick, and I am very pleased to see how the renovations have allowed the club to reconnect with the local community.

Best wishes,

Andy

andy@andyslaughter.com

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