The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

I had to drive for an hour and twenty minutes to get to my first job. On a typical day the way home was a lot more bearable because at 2pm I would go out ‘looking for land’ and tootle my back from South Yorkshire to South Nottinghamshire by way of places like Alfreton and Gainsborough whilst listening to Mark & Lard . The way in though was more of a chore and I filled the time by listening to the Today programme. ‘You are a grown up now. You should know what is going on in the world'. The first time that I can really recall planning being featured on the Today programme was the first NPPF so I had been working for over a decade by that point and had a fair idea of how the world worked. Then, as now, the Secretary of State got a few minutes at 8:10 and then, as also now, representatives of the CPRE and the development industry were invited to argue about whether there really was a ‘ war on the countryside ’. I recall thinking to myself that if the quality of the coverage of some...

I mentioned at the end of episode 162 a few weeks ago that friend of the podcast Simon Ricketts has invited some of the finest minds in the profession... and me... to help him mark ten years of his Simonicity blog. 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 of town and country planning might look like in ten years time, which sounds like a lot of fun. This is taking place on Monday 1 June at XLP in London (to where all proceeds will be directed) and whilst the 120 tickets are going on general sale on 7 April 2026, subscribers to the bloggers involved have access to an exclusive pre-sale via this link . It is first come first served so get in quick!

Episode 163 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. New Towns are back in the news because you will have seen that the Government has announced the first formal step in creating the next generation of them with the launch of a public consultation on the draft New Towns Programme and its environmental implications. The consultation builds on the findings of the New Towns Taskforce report in September 2025 and invites views on how the New Towns Programme will operate, how new towns will be delivered and planned, and the proposed approach to design, placemaking and planning policy. It seeks views on the Government’s offer to locations and a Strategic Environment Assessment report which focuses on local environmental constraints, the cumulative effects of new towns development, and practical methods of mitigation and monitoring. Now then seemed like a good time for me to share a recording made in November 2025 by new friends of the podcast Rebecc...

Podcast episode 162 is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . This is the third 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 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. 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 Paul chats to Jannes Willems and Lilian van Karnenbeek about planning in the Netherlands. Jannes is an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam and Lilian is a researcher at Utrecht University. In a conversation recorded online ba...

As you might have heard, during podcast episode 159  there was a discussion about the attractiveness of RTPI membership to recent graduates. The point was made that, if the Masters required for chartered status burdens graduates with a year's more debt, and employers, certainly consultancies, do not in a tight labour market require such status, why would they stay at University for that final year or take on two years of part-time study? Then as you might have seen last week, planners at Basildon were subjected to some pretty unpleasant behaviour by some councillors on the planning committee. That led me to wonder how many planners within LPAs are chartered and so might expect to be able to rely on the RTPI for support were they to launch a complaint about this kind of thing. What proportion of planners working in the public and private sectors are actually members of the RTPI and if they aren't why aren't they? If they are, but their employers pay their fees, would they t...

If you are involved they are terrible, but if you are just observing they are terrific. That is how, way back in the day..., I introduced Episode 7 of 50 Shades of Planning. If you are reading a town planning-based blog then the chances are that you will have participated in a planning committee previously, will know immediately what I mean, and will have your own tales to tell. If you are not a planner though or have not been subject to this unique ‘cauldron of human emotion’ (which is what I called Episode 7) then you should watch Wokingham ’s planning committee take over an hour to debate the merits of a proposed communications kiosk in Woodley recently (I only knew about this because I saw somebody last week who had to sit through this discussion whilst waiting for the next application, but you could probably pick any planning committee at any council on any day of the year and see something similar). Yes, of course, not all planning committees are akin to putting the fate of a tr...