Sam Stafford's Blog

Episode number 125 of the podcast is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . With a General Election now imminent I thought that it might be interesting to try to compare what is being offered by the main political parties in relation to housing, planning and development with what the housing, planning and development sector would like to see being offered. To do so I spoke to new friends of the podcast Richard Blyth , Tony Mulhall, Marie Chadwick and Ian Fletcher , and old friend of the podcast Paul Brocklehurst , about the policy proposals that their respective organisations are promulgating. Richard is Head of Policy & Practice at the RTPI; Tony is a Senior Specialist at RICS; Marie is Policy Leader at the NHF; Paul is Chair of the LPDF; and Ian is Director of Real Estate Policy at the BPF. I invited them all to outline their respective manifestos and then we focused on two key areas that everybody agreed need to be addressed: the need to get more resource...

Episode number 124 of the podcast is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . In February 2024 Planning published a special report by Joey Gardiner entitled ‘how cost-saving consultants disrupted council planning services’. "Cash-strapped councils have been following management consultants’ advice to split up their planning teams. Staff have been put into central departments to handle additional non-planning tasks. But the upshot, say critics, has been declining performance and a staff exodus." Joey’s piece highlighted the tumult at Tandridge, which in 2020 was formally threatened with designation over the quality of its decision-making. A subsequent PAS review of the council’s development management service, which was published in 2021, laid the blame squarely on a team structure “developed during the corporate restructure” that it said was “not fit for purpose”. That local government has borne the brunt of the age of austerity is well known. According to ...

Episode number 123 of the podcast is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . When I first covered nutrient neutrality , in February 2021, I described the process of eutrophication as a bit like the podcast itself: a little niche, but very important. When I published a second episode in September 2022 it had grown in importance to the extent that Prime Minister Liz Truss had pledged to "scrap nutrient neutrality rules". A Government press release issued in August 2023 stated that “through an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB), the Government will do away with this red tape and allow for the delivery of more than 100,000 new homes desperately needed by local communities."” The LURB amendments in question were subsequently defeated, nutrient neutrality rules have not been scrapped, and 2 June 2024 marks the fifth anniversary of Natural England’s first advice note for LPAs in the Solent Region. The question that I posed in that seco...

I have written something for The Planner on how Labour might follow through with a pledge to “drive housebuilding on grey belt". It can be found here .