The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

Podcast episode 151 is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . In between some moving and shaking in The Big Smoke recently I took the opportunity to meet a few friends of the podcast at Soho Radio Studios to pick out the highlights from another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. I caught up with, and you will hear in this episode from, old friends of the podcast Simon Ricketts, Annie Gingell, Shelly Rouse and Hana Loftus, and new friend of the podcast Hayley White. We started by talking about the recently broadcast Panorama programme on the housing crisis; we went on to talk about affordable housing delivery, specifically the constraints on the use of grant funding by registered providers and the (then) rumoured changes to affordable housing thresholds in London; C.G. Fry and the implications thereof; and, in the context of a second letter from the Minister to the Planning Inspectorate about local pl...

Podcast episode 150 is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . Every now and then somebody will ask me where Ripponden is and I tend to reply by saying that if, when driving between Manchester and Leeds, you get to the apocryphal farmhouse in the middle of the motorway and look to the left, you can just about see Ripponden in the middle distance. That section of the M62 is entirely within the Green Belt, which is somewhat remarkable if you can picture it. Indeed, the bench from which I often record my intros and outros to episodes is in the Green Belt, despite Ripponden being a couple of fields away back in one direction and the nearest settlement, Littleborough, being about seven miles in the other direction, with the Blackstone Edge escarpment in between. The fields immediately adjacent to Stafford Towers very definitely do safeguard the countryside from encroachment..., but all the way from Ripponden to Littleborough? All the way from Manchester to Leeds? Why do I ...

In the Coen Brother’s 2000 masterpiece after which this blog is ever-so cleverly and ever-so slightly tenuously named, silver-tongued Ulysses Everett McGill convinces the two convicts to whom he is shackled to escape with him in order to retrieve treasure from the soon-to-be bottom of a reservoir. As it transpired there was no treasure. McGill simply wanted to stop his former wife getting remarried. The only thing that his companions discovered was that McGill’s rhetoric did not match the reality (“I only had two weeks left on my sentence”, said one of them, Pete Hogswallop, upon finding out…). Yesterday’s MHCLG press release, “Pro-growth package unshackling Britain to get building” , is also strong on rhetoric... New measures to slash delays and get Britain building faster through landmark Planning and Infrastructure Bill New powers for Secretary of State could stop councils rejecting planning permissions, tackle blockers in the courts, alongside plans to accelerate reservoirs, windf...

Podcast episode 149 is available now via this link or from Apple  and Spotify . What do you make of this, Readers? It is from an article that I came across on the Nation Cymru website back in July. Wrexham Council will defend its opposition to plans for 600 homes on land south of Holt Road against the advice of planning officers. The application is due to go to appeal on September 29 but at a meeting of Wrexham County Borough Council’s Planning Committee on Monday, senior planning officer Matthew Phillips said no-one within the council’s planning department could represent the council in front of Planning and Environment Decisions Wales inspectors. “I would be in a difficult position defending that as it would go contrary to the Royal Town Planning Institute’s professional charter which says officers shouldn’t try to defend a position contrary to their professional recommendation in an inquiry,” he said. The responses that I received when I shared that with a few people convinced ...

Podcast episode 148 is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . This is the fourteenth episode in my Hitting the High Notes series. If you have not listened to one of these before the basic proposition is that I chat to preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors about the six planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals. And, so that we can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career I also ask my guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period. Think of it as town planning’s equivalent (rip off...) of Desert Island Discs. Unlike Desert Island Discs though you will not hear any of that music during the episode because using commercially-licensed music without the copyright holders permission or a very expensive PRS licensing agreement could land me in hot water, so, when you have finished listening, you will have to make do with YouTube videos and a Spotify playlist,...

Podcast episode 147 is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . I was in Swinging London recently and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Nicola Gooch, Catriona Riddell, Andrew Taylor, Annie Gingell and Iain Thomson. Over the course of an hour or so at Soho Radio Studios we enjoyed a good ol’ fashioned 50 Shades-style ramblechat about a few of hot topics exercising the planning profession at present. We talked about statutory consultees and specifically the need to engage utility providers with the SDS process. We talked about the merits of locally-set application fees. We talked about grant funding for affordable housing; the English Devolution & Community Empowerment Bill, which led on to Assets of Community Value; the use of hotels for the accommodation of asylum seekers; Level 7 Apprenticeships; and we talked about data centres.