Skip to main content

Podcast episode 172: Hitting the High Notes - Peter Soulsby

Episode 172 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms.

I was invited to contribute to an event in Leicester back in October last year and also on the panel that evening was Grant Butterworth, who I have known for a long time. Grant kindly invited me down early for a tour of the city, which I readily accepted because Leicester is not a place that I knew well and Grant is always fine company.

Anyway, as we were walking around and Grant was pointing out this scheme and that scheme he suggested to me that I really should invite Peter Soulsby on to the podcast, and so I did, Peter accepted, and we met at some studios on the outskirts of Leicester in January.

Peter, or rather Sir Peter, has been a politician for over fifty years. He was first elected to Leicester City Council in 1973, but lost his seat in 2003. In between he served as the Leader of the Council twice. Peter was then the MP for Leicester South from 2005 until he resigned his seat in 2011 in order to contest the new post of City Mayor, a role that he has held since.

Now, long-serving (or rather long-suffering) listeners will know that, hitherto, it has been preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors that have talked me through the planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals during these Hitting the High Notes episodes. Given though the relationship between planning and politics it was a good idea of Grant’s to broaden that tent and hear another perspective.

Hitting The High Notes, if you have not listened to one before, is town planning’s equivalent (nee rip off) of Desert Island Discs in that, so we can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career I also be ask my guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period.

Unlike Desert Island Discs 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 YouTube videos and a Spotify playlist, links to which you will find in the episode description.

Over the course of an hour or so Peter tells me about moving from the North East to London and then up to Leicester to study. He tells me about why he gave up teaching for politics, what local government looked like half a century ago and why not all mayors are the same. We talk about building roads, housing renewal, the City Challenge programme, regenerating town centres and knocking down roads.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life on the Front Line

I like it when people get in touch with me to suggest topics for 50 Shades of Planning Podcast episodes because, firstly, it means that people are listening to it and also, and most importantly, it means I do not have to come up with ideas myself. I found this message from a team leader at a local authority striking and sobering though. In a subsequent conversation the person that sent this confided in me that their team is virtually in crisis mode. It is probably fair to say that the planning system is in crisis, but then it is also probably fair to say that the planning system is always in crisis… There is, of course, the issue of resources. Whilst according to a Planning magazine survey slightly more LPAs are predicting growth in planning department budgets (25%) rather than a contraction (22%), this has to be seen in the context of a 38% real-terms fall in net current expenditure on planning functions between 2010–11 and 2017–18. Beyond resources though the current crisis feels m...
197 comments
Read more

50 Shades of Planning T-Shirts!

If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast you will have heard Clive Betts say that... 'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'. I said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt so I have made a few and it does! They are available in black or white (in S, M and L sizes) and are £15 if there is a chance that I'll be able to deliver one to you or £20 if you will need it posting. Please email samstafford@hotmail.com if you would like one. Planning might not be black and white, but the 50 Shades t-shirts are...
140 comments
Read more

YIMBYs and NIMBYs. Is planning becoming a new front in the culture war?

Prepare the barricades, fellow planners; dig out a shelter at the bottom of your garden (if you are lucky enough to have a garden…); and stock up on tins of non-perishable food. There might be a culture war coming and a good planner always spots trouble before it arrives... Given broader cultural, media and political trends it was perhaps only a matter of time before the built environment was subject to the same us versus them, progressive versus regressive factionalism that mars other aspects of public policy and debate. Twitter, of course, is not representative of public opinion, but it can be representative of the cultural, media and political influencers that are shaping it and I spotted this image on there recently. As far as I could tell it was a Brit that posted it and so it is not one of those unseemly intellectual skirmishes breezily dismissed as something our crazy, madcap cousins on the other side of the Atlantic occupy themselves with. Stereotypes are sometimes funny and so...
72 comments
Read more