Whilst in London recently Sam Stafford took the opportunity to catch up with old friends of the podcast Simon Ricketts, Andrew Taylor and Mike Kiely.
Simon is a Partner at Town Legal, Andrew is Group Planning and Sustainability Director at Vistry and Mike is a former Chief Planner, now independent planning consultant working mainly in the public sector as well as chairing the board of the Planning Officer's Society.
In a conversation recorded at Brazen Studios in Southwark they kicked around a few of the issues exercising the planning profession at the minute. Their ramblechat took in evidenced unmet need; the pause to local government reorganisation; housing targets; Reform’s planning teal paper; the importance of next month’s Budget; and reports from the RTPI of an increasing use of its professional conduct complaints process as a way of people seeking to challenge LPA decisions.
Some accompanying reading.
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Some accompanying viewing.
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Some accompanying listening.
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50 Shades of Planning is the podcast by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use it as a platform for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then you are also very welcome to get in touch with Sam.
50 Shades of Planning
50 Shades of Planning is Sam Stafford’s attempt to explore the foibles of the English planning system and its aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives.
50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which are a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners.
50 Shades episode also include the 'All Around the World' series, which is being led by friend of the podcast, Paul Smith.
Paul put it to Sam that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. Planners here very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he chats with planning professionals and academics from a number of countries to find out what works well there, what works less well, and what can be learnt.
Sam is on Bluesky and Instagram, and his blogs can be found here.
The 50 Shades platforms are expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
50 Shades of Planning is by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use the podcast or the YouTube channel for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with Sam via [email protected] or the 50 Shades WhatsApp Community.
Why Fifty Shades? Well, town and country planning is very much not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....
