Forty shades of NIMBY I thought the headline might appeal to you, but first a word from our sponsor. Commercial Break. Yesterday there were local elections in many parts of the UK. You can get the headlines but what really happened to YOUR site? We […]

I’m in floods of tears I’m not going to name the council, but I have just spent the best part of an hour watching a planning committee in action. (or inaction as it turned out). The executives at Netflix, Amazon Prime and the Disney Channel […]

Confessions of a door-knocker Here we come Walkin’ down the street We get the funniest looks from Everyone we meet ​​​The Monkees, 1966 I had my first experience of door-knocking when I was six. While other boys were brought by their fathers to watch hurling or […]

Which came first? The Planner or the Chicken When McDonalds decided to introduce Chicken McNuggets 40 years ago, they had a problem. (Please read on – I’ll get to the point in a minute). Their demand for chicken would be so great that it would […]

Isn’t our local government democracy in a total mess? You can too much of a good thing. And democracy is one of them. Look at the layers of government we have in the UK. Parish Councils, District and Borough Councils, County Councils, MPs. I’m not […]

How to stop local Authority Planners from quitting There are very few planners I know who didn’t start their career in a Local Authority. Some have stayed and risen through the ranks whereas others have moved to the private sector or consultancy. (It amuses me […]

The rise of citizen power: it’s time to learn your ABC As we head towards the local election on May 5, we are noticing a strange phenomenon: the rise of the residents’ groups as a political force. Take for example Spelthorne Council in Surrey. This […]

Where have all the planners gone? It came to me in blinding flash just as I was falling asleep. The reason that planning is slow is not the system. It is because there is no one to manage the system. It is like an engine […]

Has reorganisation of planning ever worked? This week’s question: how many housing Ministers have there been since 1990? (Have a guess and let me know, I’ll tell you the answer next week) We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to […]

Do we learn anything from history?   Normally, I try to keep this column cheery but this week, it is difficult to be humorous in light of what’s happening in Ukraine. A couple of weeks ago, I and many other commentators thought Putin was posturing […]