Episode 173 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual platforms. I was in London recently and took the opportunity to catch up with old friends of the podcast Simon Ricketts, Andrew Taylor and Mike Kiely. Simon is a Partner at Town Legal, Andrew is Group Planning and Sustainability Director at Vistry and Mike is a former Chief Planner, now independent planning consultant working mainly in the public sector as well as chairing the board of the Planning Officers Society. In a conversation recorded at Brazen Studios in Southwark, which we enjoyed visiting for the first time, we kicked around a few of the issues exercising the planning profession at the minute. Our ramble chat took in evidenced unmet need; the pause to local government reorganisation; housing targets; Reform’s planning teal paper; the importance of next month’s budget; and reports from the RTPI of increasing use of its professional conduct complaints process as a way of people seeking to challenge L...
Episode 182 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. As regular listeners will know there is often talk on the podcast about the role of local councillors in the planning system, in the context of, for example, overturning officer recommendations or a decision to withdraw a local plan. We talk less often about the role of MPs, which is something that friend of the podcast Andrew Taylor wanted to remedy and this is the third of what he and I hope will be five episodes exploring what it is to be a member of a parliament by way of conversations that Andrew records with representatives from the now five major parties. Andrew, again regular listeners will know, is the Group Planning & Sustainability Director at Vistry. This time he speaks to representatives of Reform UK. Now. The eagle-eyed amongst you might already have spotted that the title of this episode is not 'Meet the MPs', as with the previous episodes in the series with repres...