Episode 156 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link (or from Apple and Spotify ). This is the second of my seasonal offerings that serve as a review of 2025 and I am very pleased to say that one of the most entertaining, informed and erudite planning commentators, if not the most entertaining, informed and erudite of the planning commentators, Zack Simons, kindly bestowed upon me again the honour of announcing his Planoraks Awards on the podcast. I met Zack at Soho Radio Studios and he handed me six golden envelopes which you will hear me open during our conversation. They contain the winners of the following awards: Policy of the Year; Missed Opportunity of the Year; Catastrophe of the Year; Delay of the Year; Stat of the Year; and Consent of the Year. There were, given that we recorded a few days after the revised draft of the NPPF had been published , a few late entries into some of those categories... If you are reading this you will have read, I am sure, Zac...
Hello Readers. My name is Sam, I am a town planner and I sometimes write about town planning-related things (in my own time and as an expression of my own opinions). I have a town planning-related podcast (there is a link to that on this page somewhere) and I circulate a town planning-related newsletter from time to time (here is a link to that somewhere as well). Should you be so inclined, I am on Bluesky (@samuelstafford.bsky.social) and Instagram (@samuel__stafford).