The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

I was invited recently to contribute to a strategic land seminar and to offer a view on the Government’s planning reform agenda in the context of my past experience out on the frontline of this sector (as opposed to now being up in an ivory tower working to shape said reform agenda...). For the most part of the early stage of my career I was a ‘jack of all trades’ (master of none...) planning consultant in ‘multi-disciplinary environments’ and through honest endeavour worked my way to Associate status. To secure further promotion though hung upon an ability to generate fees oneself, which my lack of both a specialism and a client base was a barrier to so doing. It was at Savills that I spotted an opportunity to carve out a niche for myself by working with the strategic land agents. I would attend pitches with them and talk landowners through the pedigree of their site and the likely planning strategy for bringing it forward. If my colleagues secured the instruction to solicit a promoti...

Podcast episode 153 is available now via this link , Spotify , Apple , or the usual podcast platforms. Empirical evidence is starting to emerge, as speculated upon earlier in year, that there will indeed be a significant increase in the number of planning applications being submitted this year, certainly for residential development and largely, it is held, driven by the introduction of Grey Belt. TerraQuest , the company behind the Planning Portal, has reported that the number of new homes for which planning permission was sought between the 1 July and 30 September this year was 68% higher than during the same period last year. As I said in the introduction to the first Snagging List episode (episode number 143 ), if this increase in planning applications is to make a meaningful contribution to the Government's new home target within the parliamentary term, then these applications will need to be transacted an awful lot faster than applications have been transacted hitherto. Accord...

Episode 152 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . I topped and tailed this episode whilst on holiday in Nerja at the end of October, but it was published on 8 November to coincide with World Town Planning Day. This seemed the perfect opportunity to publish the second of a series of episodes being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, Mr Paul Smith . Paul, regular listeners will know, is the Managing Director at the Strategic Land Group and a Housing Today columnist. Paul put it to me that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. We very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. He wanted to remedy that and so in this series he is chatting 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. In this episode we head down under... This a conversa...

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...