The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

Episode 175 of the podcast  is available now via this link below or from the usual podcast platforms. The role of local councillors in the planning system has been a familiar topic of conversation on the podcast in the context of, for example, overturning officer recommendations and the case for a national scheme of delegation. There is less talk about the role of MPs in the planning system, which is something that friend of the podcast Andrew Taylor wanted to remedy. This then is the second of what he and I hope will be five episodes exploring the role of a member of a parliament by way of conversations that Andrew records with representatives from the now five major parties. This time, the Liberal Democrats, and a conversation recorded with Vikki Slade and Sarah Gibson at Soho Radio Studios in April 2026. Andrew, regular listeners will know, is Group Planning and Sustainability Director at Vistry. Vikki represents Mid Dorset and North Poole and is a former group leader on B...

Episode 174 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. I was in London recently and whilst there caught up with friends of the podcast Hana Loftus , Mike Kiely , Nicola Gooch , Simon Ricketts and Andrew Taylor . Hana is a Director at HAT Projects; Mike is a former Chief Planner and now an independent planning consultant working mainly in the public sector; Nicola is a Partner at Birketts; Simon is a Partner at Town Legal and Andrew is Group Planning & Sustainability Director at Vistry. In a conversation recorded at Soho Radio Studios  we chatted about some of the hot topics exercising the planning profession at the minute. We talked about the legal challenge by some London boroughs to the Mayor’s package of time-limited emergency measures to support housebuilding. We talked about planning committees, the national scheme of delegation, statutory chief planners, the designation of LPAs for poor performance, the Nature Restoratio...

Some of you might know that since January 2024 I have been issue a periodic newsletter. I was conscious that I had not issued one for a while, but did not realise until logging in to Mailchimp at the weekend that it had been three months since the last one. Evidently I am struggling to find the time so have decided to call time on that. To be fair, when I had been issuing them of late, they had become little more than summaries of the podcast descriptions so they were not really what I had in mind when I started them. If you are subscribed to this blog and to the 50 Shades podcast then you will not miss anything I publish on these platforms. One of the aims of the newsletter was to bring people together and, as well as sharing news of the blog and podcast, I hoped that it could act as a noticeboard for anybody wanting to share things of possible interest. I think that I can achieve those aims, and perhaps even achieve more, with a WhatsApp Community . The spur was being asked on Lin...

Episode 173 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. This is the fourth of a series of episodes being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, 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 a little while ago 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. Paul 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 Paul explores the planning system in New Zealand with Stuart Donovan . Stuart is an economist and Senior Fellow with Motu Research, an independent Wellington-based economics and public policy institute. In a conversation rec...

You might have seen that friend of the 50 Shades of Planning podcast Catriona Riddell's latest column for Planning was called 'How planning could work in 2036 (if the new system is allowed to bed down)'. "High speed railways, electricity lines and reservoirs, plus a network of new towns offering plentiful affordable housing, will be enabled in the next decade by the reformed planning system, says our columnist." "2036 is looking bright, thanks to the decisions made in 2026!" was Catriona's final line. What if those decisions are not made though? An alternative take on what we might be dealing with in ten years time was shared by a mutual friend of Catriona and I in a WhatsApp group to which we are both part and the author of that alternative take was agreeable to me sharing it anonymously on here. In 2036 it has been accepted that the plan-led system was a myth. The 30-month plan-making system was a disaster due to pesky things like needing to achie...

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 resigne...