Recently in Planning Category

One of the things about being a quasi-journalist is that I get all sorts of strange and diverting press releases coming across my screen each day. It can be a lot of fun. I was sent a rather entertaining thing this morning from an organisation called "Property Property Property" run by an outfit known as Juice PR.

They say they conduct a "monthly analysis of the most popular searched for borough". And in this morning's "study" they are claiming that Hackney has proven to be one of the most popular searched for boroughs among home seekers between 28 and 35 years.

I am normally in Nottingham every Wednesday.  But this week I am there again today. Hurrah!  I am not allowed to comment (yet) but I will allow you to surmise from this that things are hotting up for UKR in the city, and I am hoping to make some jolly spiffing announcements very soon. Thanks for sticking with me on this, peeps. I fully appreciate that the emerging UKR delivery story has been something of a slow burn. I guess nobody ever said it was going to be easy.  

Sandra Jones of Ramidus sent me the recently completed London Office Policy Review (LOPR 2012) the other day.  As she always does, every year.  Being interested in "all things London" I dutifully printed it off.  As I always do, every year.  And then I've spent the past few days wrestling with the aforementioned review.  As I do, every year.  There are reams of it.  And it's...er...technical.  But I needed to get to grips with it, the LOPR is a venerable institution; it's been going for yonks and yonks and is the best indicator going on trends in the London office market (and shhhhh! potential economic growth).   

The wider context for this report this year is interesting.  We live in interesting times.  For some time now I have maintained that the London Plan safeguards (or denies, whichever way you look at it) London from the policy of localism, being essentially a centrist document.  This meant that it could provide an interesting contrast to the rest of the country.  But clever planning types are now saying that the last UK wide planning reforms also fundamentally challenge the localism agenda.  It is now nearly a year since the act received Royal Assent and became law, enabling local neighbourhood forums to be established that can make neighbourhood plans.  There are a few, very few, groups in London who have seized the opportunity to make plans but, for the majority, there are signs that the complexity and cost of the process puts it firmly in the "too difficult box". Does this lack of progress on neighbourhood plans delay development?  Or does it mean an easier ride for developers? Does it matter?  Does the government's increasing efforts to stimulate growth bode well for localism?  Or what?

I guess we should be glad to see housing is today's lead story (well, at least, conservatories are).  But WHAT to make of this morning's hotchpotch of announcements in respect of planning and building?

I was slightly diverted to read of the deal reached to "unlock the Ebbsfleet project" in the press on Wednesday morning.

Forgive the wry smile, but regular readers of this blog may recall that I was chief executive at Kent Thameside in 2004 and 2005, before I decided that I simply had to leave, frankly in a state of mental exhaustion, with a level of frustration that was seriously injurious to my health.

I attended a hugely enjoyable event held by Westminster Briefing in respect of the Portas Report yesterday morning.  Yet again I wasn't very clear why I'd been invited to speak (sometimes I think I'm just the court jester) but I felt it was probably safe to do so, given that I was following David Morris of CLG, who actually knows something about the Portas Report; and that I was to be followed by Michael Weedon, of the British Independent Retailers Association, who actually knows something about independent retailers. 

This simply allowed me to be, as the press office of Tower Hamlets would have it  "sweeping and opinionated" and "bilious" in respect of the future of our town centres and high streets.  

Wednesday is Nottingham day for UKR (most weeks anyway). Gill Marshall (UKR Head of Love and Laughter) and I clambered aboard the East Midlands line as usual yesterday morning for an action-packed field trip.

It started with a cup of tea and a Twix, as usual (sold to us by Beverley) and culminated in a bottle of wine with the Sheriff of Nottingham (I kid you not. I have photographic evidence, just as soon as I work out how to retrieve same from my wretched iPhone) at the Via Fosse.

I was just THRILLED to be asked to speak at the WIMPS (Women in Metropolitan Planning Services) Dinner last night. Gosh. How lovely it was! The chosen name for their group is clearly wholly ironic, for a less wimpy gathering would be rather hard to imagine! In fact, I'd have categorised these ladies as a doughty and feisty force to be reckoned with. Actually they are quite terrifying really and, I would imagine, rather proud of that fact. Under the skilled leadership of Pippa Aitken of Colliers CRE and Alison Blom-Cooper of Fortismore Associates, there was more brain power mustered in that room in Victoria than you could shake an Article 14 Direction at!
 
These ladies give town planning a good name. I was so impressed with them all, felt so very reinforced, felt so much that - ahem - lead had been put back in my pencil (do forgive totally inappropriate sexist expression), that I Tweeted on the tube on the way home that the "brainy birds" should be "put in charge of running the country". Whereupon that well known wag, Richard Aylwin, in a reference to the nursery rhyme, responded to say they might "swoop down and peck off your nose"! Well, he's a surveyor and a journalist, and he's ambivalent about planners (although rather keen on women I'd have said).
 

If I say so myself, we are on a serious roll in UKR now.  We have had good news on funding for our pilot project in Nottingham, and we can now turn our attention to the pipeline, which is rather a nice problem to have.  But it means we are now massively spreading the word. UKR is collaborating with a host of like-minded organisations to hold a series of events that are doing nothing short of rebuilding the cause of regeneration in the UK.  And to great effect.  

The second in the BBC2 series "The Secret Life of Streets" aired last night.  And the BBC are to be totally commended on this piece of thought provoking programme commissioning.  But, whilst last night's was an interesting programme, featuring Camberwell Grove (surely one of the finest streets in London), and dealing with issues of 1960s alternative lifestyles and gentrification, it was nothing like as moving as last week's broadcast on the "slum clearance" around Deptford High Street (see my blog).

But last week's programme also caused a furore.  I was very pleased that David Knight posted a comment on this blog, putting me right on the position of Nicholas Taylor (btw not to be confused with the silver fox lawyer of the same name who used to sit at Godfrey Bradman's right hand).  As David says (of my piece) "the argument stated here was exactly the one Taylor was trying to make, on this documentary and more importantly in his book "The Village in the City" (1973), which was a condemnation of the kind of planning that the documentary, er, condemns. The portrayal of Taylor in this documentary as exactly the kind of planner he tilted against is appalling".