PROTESTERS descended upon a London hotel last night as property developers made merry at an awards ceremony promoting some of the capital’s largest gentrification projects.

As the 2015 Property Awards continued inside Grosvenor House, activists and community members held an alternative ceremony, celebrating famous campaigns such as Sweets Way Resists and other anti-gentrification groups.

“Property developers and companies are contributing to the destruction of our diverse capital city as we know it, from rising rents and a shortage of social housing, to the closure of libraries and social centres, the demolition of pubs and clubs,” said Friends of the Joiners Arms supporter Charlotte Gerada.

“They are complicit in a process of social cleansing, by which London is becoming off-limits to the families and communities that have lived here for generations.”

Property investment firm Delancey is among the companies involved in the £3 billion redevelopment of south London’s Elephant and Castle.

It has been shortlisted for the Company of the Year award.

But Delancey has refused to rule out the demolition of much loved local club The Coronet, where the young Charlie Chaplin used to perform.

Also at the protest was the owner of Soho’s 150-year-old pub the Coach and Horses.

Alastair Choat has spent the years fighting the sell-off of London’s bohemian quarter.

“I am deeply passionate about Soho and horrified at the blight of development destroying our heritage in the name of progress and change but really about profit,” said Mr Choat.

“The lack of social housing and affordable development in London, and particularly central London, is shocking.

“Our politicians constantly talk about the lack of housing in London but then turn a blind eye to developments that have no real benefit to the people of London.”

Investment firms Mill Group Residential and Hammerson were shortlisted at the awards.

Mill Group chief executive David Toplas said last year that the fall of affordable housing saw his rental business go “from strength to strength.”

Similarly, Hammerson owns the Bishopsgate Goodsyard project in east London, where only 10 per cent of the almost 1,500 new flats will be marked as “affordable” — 80 per cent of local market rate.