"When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather." Samuel Johnson, 1758. “When two English property professionals meet, their first talk is the state of the planning system.” Samuel Stafford, 2022. I cannot remember a time during my working life when property professionals were not grumbling about the planning system, but things do feel especially bad at the minute. The 2018 Raynsford Review , commissioned by the Town & Country Planning Association, asserted that the system is at it’s lowest ebb. “Planning in England is less effective than at any time in the post-war era, with an underfunded and deeply demoralised public planning service, conflicting policy objectives, and significant deregulation”, the report stated. If things were bad in 2018 they are arguably worse now. Catriona Riddell wrote in Planning Magazine in November 2021 about low morale in LPAs, citing the increasingly divisive nature of development, the expectation that planning departments can