Podcast episode 159: We Love Planning

Episode 159 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or Apple and Spotify.

My initial aim for the 50 Shades of Planning podcast was to replicate James Richardson’s Totally Football show in which he chats to a revolving cast of regular contributors about the issues of the day. Over time these episodes have become interspersed with other more thematic episodes, but I have done that from the outset with some friends in Manchester and then later, as I started spending more time down there, with some friends in The Big Smoke. I mention that because I was in Birmingham last week and recorded the first of this type of ‘catch up’ episode with some of my friends working in the West Midlands.

Kathryn Ventham, old friend of the podcast, is a Senior Director at Twenty5 Planning; Myles Wild-Smith, new friend of the podcast, is a Director at Lichfields; and Michelle Simpson-Gallego, also a new friend of the podcast, is a Senior Planning Manager at Terra Strategic.

In a conversation recorded at PodHaus studios we enjoyed a rambling conversation that takes in, amongst other things, the extent to which Grey Belt is driving the increase in planning applications for new homes; the ‘grit in the system’, particularly stat cons, specifically water companies, and the RP / S106 stock issue; plan-making in the West Midlands, the case for a national spatial plan; and why it is that most young people have never heard of the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning.

If you work in the West Midlandss, or indeed the North West or London, and want to get involved in these recordings do please feel free to get in touch with me via samstafford@hotmail.com. By the same token, if you work elsewhere and think that there might be interest in putting together similar episodes in places like Newcastle, Leeds or Bristol do please also let me know. I do get around.

Comments

Life on the Front Line

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