Busy week has yielded many rewards

What a busy and rewarding week!

Rynd Smith, Tino Hernandez and I held three stakeholder briefing meetings with some really important players - on one day!

First we met David Curtis, Regional Director of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), who had asked to meet us, as the Director with responsibility for dealing with the RTPI (and other professional bodies).

This meeting followed the earlier meeting with Sir Bob Kerslake, mentioned in a previous blog. The conversation was wide ranging and covered the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) accessing our Networks to deliver advice and for consultation; the HCA and Regions, in particular future links, regarding the delivery of HCA Regional Investment Plans; promoting Design Review Panels, a CABE initiative, funded by the HCA; and HCA engagement in my regional visits.

David has an exceptional record of both delivery of the revitalised town centre in Sheffield and co-ordination of all the public and private stakeholders in that process. It’s nice to have an MRTPI in his position!

We then met Huw Morris, Editor of Planning Magazine, to discuss our RTPI campaigns. We pressed Huw as to whether the RTPI pages might feature earlier in the magazine. He surprised us by saying that we were between the two most read pages of Development Control Casebook and the advertisements.
From a recent survey of their 23,000 readers, the RTPI pages had a reading level of between 55% and 60%!

Next, on to the House of Lords, to meet a long time friend of the RTPI, Lord Richard Best, as President of the Local Government Association, with Martin Wheatley, LGA Policy Director.

I’m sure the surroundings helped because we reached an understanding on a number of areas. This included increased co-operation between the LGA and RTPI, to promote Politicians in Planning Association (PIPA) membership to the LGA councillors and cabinet members; discussions with local authority chief executive officers on planning and co-operation on the promotion of Planning Aid.

The rest of the week included the Executive Board (ExBo), which had a huge agenda, upon which others will report, and one of the liveliest General Assemblies in recent years - discussing policy input to Richard Summer’s, Rynd Smith’s and the Planning Policy and Practice (PPP) Committee’s Planning for Climate Change paper that will be submitted to Margaret Beckett MP, the Planning Minister, at the Planning Convention in June.

Specialist groups of the General Assembly (GA) worked before, during and after the GA, to provide clear direction and best practice examples so that the document will provide a clear and wide ranging professional agenda and toolkit on this essential subject.

I also attended the Planning Convention Steering Group, chaired by Mike Hayes. The numbers are holding up well in the current climate, but more delegates would be welcome at the most important RTPI event of the year!

It will be even better this year, with several important policy and guidance papers being launched by the RTPI and others. Also, special awards are on offer, such as that for the Network securing the highest number of conversions of non-members to members, and the Region/Nation that secures the most Learning Partners.

Most importantly, Sue Percy’s quality check of all sessions will ensure that the highest standard of advice will be on offer.

Finally, both CLG and ExBo will be making themselves available to RTPI members for discussion on any issue that concerns you.

Martin Willey

2009 RTPI President