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Podcast episode 146: All Around the World - USA

Podcast episode 146 is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . This is the first of a new series being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, Mr Paul Smith. Paul, regular listeners to the podcast will know, is the Managing Director at the Strategic Land Group and a Housing Today columnist. Paul put it to me a little while ago that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England, which is right isn’t it? We obsess about whether it is or is not moving towards or further away from whatever it looked like in whenever the good old days were. We very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he is going to chat with planning professionals and academics from a number of countries to find out what works well there, what works less well, and what can we learn. First up. The USA. You will hear in the episode a conversation that Paul record...
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Podcast episode 145: New politics, New Towns and new books

Podcast episode 145 is available now via this  link  or from  iTunes  and  Spotify  and it  sees the welcome return of the Hitting The High Notes series. Just before heading off to Spain for a couple of weeks I was in Manchester and took the opportunity to catch up with old friends of the podcast Ian Wray,  Claire Petricca-Riding and David Diggle, and new friends of the podcast Charlotte Leach and Louise Fountain. Over the course of an hour or so we enjoyed a good ol’ fashioned 50 Shades ramblechat. We talked about the increasingly rancorous nature of planning and whether a sense of fractiousness and febrility is driving the rise of Reform as a political force. We also talked about New Towns and Ian’s 'Northern Arc' proposition, and, towards the end, we swapped holiday reading recommendations.
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On NDMPs

To be statutory or to be non-statutory? That, in relation to National Development Management Policies (NDMPs), is the existential Shakespearean conundrum that the custodians of the planning system appear to have been grappling with of late. Section 93 of The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act (LURA) made provisions, you will recall Dear Reader, to replace s.38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 as it applies in England such that determination of planning applications should be made in accordance with the development plan and any NDMPs unless material considerations strongly indicate otherwise (thereby strengthening the presumption from its current legal formulation). Further, if there is any conflict between the development plan and a NDMP, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the latter. Matthew Pennycook told MPs in November  that the Government planned to consult on the NDMPs “in the spring of next year”, but spring has turned to summer and in reporting th...
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Call for Evidence - Life on the Front Line III

Long-serving (long-suffering?) readers of the blog and listeners to the podcast will recall that back in December 2021 I published the first Life on the Front blog , which informed episode 60 of the podcast a short time afterwards. I revisited the theme with a second blog and podcast a year later. The basis of the initial exercise was, at the prompting of a listener, to explore the LPA staffing crisis and, in 'taking the temperature' of the profession, it certainly struck a nerve. That first blog, as of just now, has been viewed 19,453 times, which is much, much more than my typical wittering. Now seems like a good time to revisit what life is like on planning's front line for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Government has been in power for a year now and so it is legitimate to ask whether the wave of optimism that immediately followed the election was justified. You might remember that very early on in his ministerial tenure Matthew Pennycook wrote to the RTPI statin...
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Podcast episode 144: Hitting the High Notes - Tim Waring

Podcast episode 144 is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify  and it sees the welcome return of the 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 (nee rip off) of Desert Island Discs. Unlike Desert Island Discs though you will not, I am afraid, 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 You Tube videos an...
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Support small builders, bash the big ones

Is this fair or is it just a seasoned blogger’s cynical attempt at generating interest in an otherwise fairly dry attempt at summarising the most recent round of planning reform announcements? Who is to say, but this is my attempt at a summary of the build out, site threshold, planning committee and BNG proposals, synthesised with what I humbly contend the key elements of them to be. Just to recap… 25 May (bash the big builders) ‘Get on and Build' Deputy Prime Minister urges housebuilders ​​ ​​​Planning Reform Working Paper: Speeding Up Build Out ​​ - GOV.UK ​ ​Technical consultation on implementing measures to improve Build Out transparency​ - GOV.UK 28 May (support the small ones) Government backs SME builders to get Britain building - GOV.UK Planning Reform Working Paper: Reforming Site Thresholds - GOV.UK Reform of planning committees: technical consultation - GOV.UK Improving the implementation of biodiversity net gain for minor, medium and brownfield develop...
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Water Palava

Whatever it is that you do your working life will most likely have a rhythm to it. A senior planning officer, for example, might have their week influenced by the monthly committee cycle.  A senior planning consultant, for further example, might have their week influenced by the monthly fee forecast. My working week is typically influenced by what I get the most emails about, which  does ebb and flow over time.  The frequency and concentration of emails affords the opportunity to sniff out the ‘live issues’ affecting the development industry at any given point in time. I have further taken to categorising these live issues into a 'Top 3', 'Top 5' and 'Top 10' so that if, for example, civil servants get 15 minutes with the Minister on a Monday morning they might be encouraged to bring three things to his attention; if they get 30 minutes, five things; if they get an hour, well you get the gist... As of right now my inbox is mostly occupied by the ability of buil...
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