My first week as RTPI President

I’ve just passed the one week mark into my year as RTPI President after a wonderful inauguration at the Royal Society of Arts, with lots of friends from my previous life joining me on the evening, together with the RTPI General Assembly and last years’ excellent RTPI President Janet O’Neill, who all attendees congratulated on a terrific year. Any delusions of grandeur I might have had however were quickly erased by grand daughter number 1, Caissie, who said in a loud voice during the ceremony: “Why is Grumpy wearing a big necklace” of course referring to my RTPI Presidential chain!

My first engagement as President was acting as an RTPI representative at the annual RTPI West Midlands Region multi professional “Great Debate”. This was held at Arup’s excellent eco friendly offices in Solihull where the RTPI WM Regional chair Sue Manns resides. I’ve attached a photo to my blog showing most of the panel and despite representing planners, engineers, architects, surveyors and the new Homes and Communities Agencies (HCA) three of us were planners - myself, Paul Spooner (HCA) and Louise Brooke-Smith (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors - RICS). The big issues were coping with the credit crisis which I plan to talk about more in my monthly column in Planning but we were also challenged on sustaining design quality and delivering Local Development Frameworks (LDFs). John Baker, chair of the Development Plans Network, gives a fascinating presentation on LDFs entitled “What are you waiting for?” and I share his sentiments!

Although many Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) have benefited from the injection of Planning and now Housing and Planning Delivery Grant (HPDG) to accelerate the LDF programme, large numbers are still some way off Core Strategy approval. It is absolutely essential that we deliver LDFs as quickly as possible and if we are short on capacity then we should look to capture the surplus delivery skills out there and available I suspect at reasonable rates? It may be that we have to persuade the department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) that HPDG should be made available on a more flexible basis to achieve this?

There is much good advice available from the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) and the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) and some Government Offices (GOs) are running mentoring schemes to share knowledge of efficient approaches without losing “local distinctiveness”. A number of us met the top team at CLG a week or so back and they are hugely supportive of the Spatial Plan Led process. At the RTPI we will continue to look at ways of disseminating best practice and encouraging the Regions and Nations to take a supportive lead. If we can identify additional sources of finance we will signpost them.

Design quality also emerged at my second presidential engagement at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) concerning Design Review Panels (DRPs) supported by The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and all of the design professions. Experience of DRPs was generally good, but there were issues regarding increasing councillor and community awareness of the importance of good design and also making sure our professional members are properly trained at University and through Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the principles of good design. I know that Colin Haylock, RTPI Executive Board trustee, CABE commissioner, Chair of the RTPI Urban Design Network and Chair of the Urban Design Alliance is taking a lead in this area. The DRP team are also looking at increasing accountability of DRPs with Annual Reports and Councillor Briefings on the agenda.

I sign off my first blog in Somerset, snowed in, but a beautiful day nonetheless and look forward to hearing from you.

Martin

Picture: Katrina Sealey LBIPP