Episode 167 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. The 2026 local elections will likely turn out to be significant for a number of reasons. Westminster psychodrama aside though, one area of immediate interest, for example, is what the increased number of councils under no overall control will mean for local plan-making. That is a topic to which I hope the podcast will return in due course. Of similar immediate interest is the possible impact upon local government reorganisation (LGR), the whys and wherefores or the pros and cons of which might have been thought to be settled up until recent events. For now though it is to be assumed that, despite perhaps some spanners being thrown into some works, LGR remains the direction of travel for the foreseeable future at least. What has to be happening right now to make it a success? What lessons can be learnt from the most recent round of unitisation? How will reorganisation ...
As I mentioned in a post at the start of April, friend of the podcast Simon Ricketts has invited some of the finest minds in the planning profession... and me... to help him mark ten years of his Simonicity blog at a now sold out event at XLP in the ‘Smoke on Monday 1 June, Simon has asked Angus Walker, Catriona Riddell, Hashi Mohamed, Jennie Baker, Nick Cuff, Nicola Gooch, Philip Barnes, Zack Simons and I to speculate as to what the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning might look like in another ten years time. My starting point is that planning, it could be said, exists to identify the problems of the future and to do something about them today... From there my first thought then was to what was happening ten years ago. Would it have been possible to foresee then what we are talking about now? Below are the news stories that featured on the Planning website on 1 June 2016. What do we notice? Arguments about the robustness of a five-year h...