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Podcast episode 160: Hitting the High Notes - Catriona Riddell

Episode 160 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or Apple and Spotify.

Strategic planning, as I said in the introduction to episode 157, is back and that episode, you might recall, looked at what shape it is in right now. What have authorities been able to do whilst awaiting the consolidation of the Planning & Infrastructure Act, the NPPF and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill?

What we did know just a few weeks ago, but we do now, are the new strategic geographies outside of areas governed by a mayor and where some work on Spatial Development Strategies is already underway.

So the podcast has looked at where we are now, but what do those tasked with consolidating the Planning & Infrastructure Act, the NPPF and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, and those producing SDSs, need to know about the last time we were planning strategically given that some time has now passed since the revocation of the Regional Spatial Strategies?

Now seemed like a good time then to publish the latest episode in the Hitting the High Notes series, which I recorded with strategic planning doyenne and old friend of the podcast Catriona Riddell at Soho Radio Studios back in September last year (just after the reshuffle that saw Steve Reed become Secretary of State, which you will hear mention of).

Hitting The High Notes, if you have not listened to one of these before, is town planning’s equivalent of (nee rip-off of) Desert Island Discs. In these episodes I chat to preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors about the six planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals. And, so that we can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career I ask my guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period.

Unlike Desert Island Discs you will not, I am afraid, hear any of that music during the episode because using commercially-licensed music without the copyright holders permission or a very expensive PRS licensing agreement could land me in hot water, so, when you have finished listening, you will have to make do with You Tube videos and a Spotify playlist, links to which you will find in the description.

Over the course of an hour and a quarter or so you will hear Catriona tell me about making the switch from architecture student in Glasgow to strategic planner in Surrey; how she became the ‘most hated woman in Guildford’; and how she shed a little tear upon reading the Devolution White Paper.

We talk about old wine, including SERPLAN, RPG and RSS (including the real reason RSSs were scrapped), and whether the Duty to Cooperate was bound to fail, and we talked about new bottles, including what, based upon Catriona’s not inconsiderable experience, will be the keys to SDS success. There is also some gypsy and traveller chat, which does not feature on the podcast very often.





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