I went to meet Adrian Duffield, Head of Planning there and in the adjoining Vale of the White Horse council - as the 2 councils, one Tory, one Lib Dem, had combined their administration, but not their councils!
Adrian manages the most efficient development management process I have seen with daily and weekly, individual and team monitoring sessions. All of his teams were lively and enthusiastic, clearly keen to perform.
We moved to Abingdon, in the Vale of the White Horse, and there, Mike Gilbert, DC Manager, took us on a tour of the town centre - in particular, to an excellent mixed new and conservation scheme, based on the Old Brewery, as illustrated here.
We then returned for lunch, to meet councillors from all parties and members of the Management Team. Here, the discussion ranged from the problems of delivering a Local Development Framework to the detailed consideration of an urban extension.
Reading was a short journey away and Alison Bell, Head of Planning, took us with members of her team, around Reading Town Centre. Alison has worked here longer than she cares to admit, and I was impressed by her vision and commitment to change the centre. As I am someone who mainly sees Reading from a train, the tour and contributions from her team were inspiring. A clear framework has emerged with proper “grain” and, despite the economy, major parts of the jigsaw were clearly about to emerge, to build on the success in transforming a difficult environment. All credit to you all.
Reading University Planning School, now part of the Henley Business School - brings tears of pleasure to my eyes, to hear that planners are educated in a Business School! - is an excellent new, energy efficient building, in the pleasant parkland campus. Dr Alina Congreve, Dr Gavin Parker and others met us with a lively group of students, from an extraordinary range of backgrounds, who challenged me on the motive and process for me becoming President.
Conversely their motive was a 50-50 mixture of either wanting to change the world, or stumbling across planning and then becoming inspired.
The RTPI is working on material to capture young people’s interest at secondary school level, and there is clearly considerable potential to increase awareness of planning as a career.
The work on display was impressive and DVDs of the best were a good way of spreading the word about the quality of the course.
Planning Aid is one of the many RTPI success stories of recent years, and Dagmar Hutt is the excellent local co-ordinator. She had assembled a diverse group of practitioners to explain their jobs and promote Planning Aid to new graduates. It was helpful to hear such a diverse range of planning careers. One memorable one had moved into planning from dissecting animals for research – lots of relevant experience there, then!!
And now for something completely different….
The new “New Forest National Park Authority”, where newly appointed Director of Strategy and Planning, Steve Avery, welcomed us to offices rather appropriately at the back of a Garden Centre!
We visited a site where his team, of mainly very young planners, is breaking new ground in rural conservation areas that picked up Forest history and settlement patterns, not just buildings.
The other particular challenge concerned local residents' resistance to the proper interpretation of the General Development Order, requiring planning consent for change of use from agricultural to horse keeping - over a thousand objectors! This is certainly planning at the coalface.
Finally, to New Forest District Council Offices, where Young Planner Chair Ed Gerry chaired a meeting on “Managing Pressures on Sensitive Sites”, with offers from Natural England, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust and the National Park Authority. After a lively discussion, I was dropped off at Romsey station and managed to stay awake and not miss my change of trains at Westbury, despite a challenging few days.
My personal reflection from this visit is to applaud the efforts of our colleagues in local authorities. Challenged within by non planner representative management teams, politically from government to release a five-year supply of housing land, but locally to delay such releases until an expected change in government might change the figures, from applicants requiring considerable powers of persuasion to submit green proposals, and from objectors determined to slow down or stop development, being a Local Authority planner requires real leadership and professional skills – well done, the South East.
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