The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

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...