Sam Stafford's Blog

My Twitter friends might have spotted that I had dinner with a DLUHC Minister last week. I know. Check me out. The conversation during dessert turned, with a set piece Planning Bill now off the agenda, to the three most impactful things that Michael Gove could do to improve the planning system. I shared my thoughts on Twitter and they provoked a bit of a discussion, which I thought worthy of exploring further in a future 50 Shades of Planning Podcast episode. So, Dear Readers, I would like to know the three most impactful things that you think Michael Gove could do to improve the planning system. We’re not talking in general terms about things like, for example, LPA resources, and we’re not talking in radical terms about things like, for example, 'Growth, Renewal and Protection Areas'. We’re not "levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England". We’re talking in practical, pragmatic terms about the relatively modest ...

It was a privilege to be invited and a pleasure to deliver the University of Reading's annual 'Planning Futures' lecture yesterday evening. The event was part of celebrations  to mark fifty years of planning teaching at Reading and, linked to that, the theme was ‘The Future of the Planning Profession’. This is what I said... One of the keys to planning consultancy, I learnt, is expectation management. I mention that at the outset because I have never delivered a lecture before, which is why it was such a privilege to be invited to address you all this evening and such a pleasure to accept. The topic, the future of the planning profession, was daunting initially by dint of it’s vastness, but then I took comfort in it’s vastness because it occurred to me that nobody, let alone me, would be able to do justice to it in the time available. I have sought to tackle it by contemplating some of the things that are exercising me at the minute and that I would try to do something abou...

The end, when it came, was fitting for two reasons. Firstly, it was that The Telegraph that had been notified of a ‘private meeting’ in which Michael Gove had told some MPs that he would not be pursuing a standalone planning bill. It was The Telegraph, of course, that launched the ‘ Hands Off Our Land ’ campaign in 2011 calling for the Coalition “to look again at proposed changes to planning laws which risk undermining the safeguards that have protected the countryside for almost 70 years.” Secondly, is was typical of the quality of debate around the ‘ Planning for the Future ’ White Paper that it’s demise was reported as being the death knell for “a controversial new planning law which would have allowed uncontrolled building in parts of the country”. Yes this round of planning reform is dead . It is not resting. It is not stunned. It has passed on. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet it’s maker. In a mere eighteen months we have gone from ‘tearing it...