50 Shades of Planning

The role of local councillors in the planning system has been a familiar topic of conversation on the podcast in the context of, for example, overturning officer recommendations and the case for a national scheme of delegation. There is less talk about the role of MPs in the planning system, which is something that friend of the podcast Andrew Taylor wanted to remedy. This then is the second of wh...

Sam Stafford was in London recently and whilst there caught up with friends of the podcast Hana Loftus , Mike Kiely , Nicola Gooch , Simon Ricketts and Andrew Taylor . Hana is a Director at HAT Projects; Mike is a former Chief Planner and now an independent planning consultant working mainly in the public sector; Nicola is a Partner at Birketts; Simon is a Partner at Town Legal and Andrew is Group...

This is the fourth of a series of episodes being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, Paul Smith . Paul put it to Sam Stafford that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. We very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he is chatting with planning...

Sam Stafford was invited to a ProCon Leicestershire event in Leicester in October 2025 and also on the panel that evening was his old friend Grant Butterworth. Grant, Head of Planning at Leicester City Council, kindly invited Sam down early for a tour of the city, and whilst so doing suggested that Peter Soulsby would make a good podcast guest. Peter has been a politician for over 50 years. He was...

This episode features the recording of an event hosted by Lorenzo Pandolfi and Simone Pagani in February 2026. Lorenzo and Simone invited Chris Katkowski and Russell Harris to tell the story of the Shard inquiry. Chris and Russell, two of the most prominent KCs in the country, share their recollections of one of the most consequential planning inquires of modern times. They talk about the characte...

"The second (epochal change) is the technology revolution led by developments in artificial intelligence, which will change everything. I mean everything. There is no point in debating whether this technological revolution is a good or bad thing. Just know it is a ‘thing’. In fact, it is ‘the thing’. It will displace jobs, though creating new ones, but no one yet knows the full consequence. Compan...

The role of local councillors in the planning system has been a familiar topic of conversation on the podcast in the context of, for example, overturning officer recommendations and the case for a national scheme of delegation. There is less talk about the role of MPs in the planning system, which is something that friend of the podcast Andrew Taylor wanted to remedy. This then is the first of wha...

Sam Stafford was in Manchester recently and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Charlotte Leach , Katie Wray , Claire Petricca-Riding and Paul Smith . Their conversation, recorded at Reform Radio, was a good old fashioned 50 Shades-style ramblechat. They started with the local elections and then from Reform got on to planning reform and back again and before they knew it a...

The 2026 local elections will likely turn out to be significant for a number of reasons. Westminster psychodrama aside though, one area of immediate interest, for example, is what the increased number of councils under no overall control will mean for local plan-making. That is a topic to which Sam Stafford hopes the podcast will return in due course. Of similar immediate interest is the possible...

Sam Stafford was in Birmingham recently and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Mike Best , Kathryn Ventham and Michelle Simpson-Gallego at PodHaus studios in Digbeth. They talked about why the recent consultation on areas for producing Spatial Development Strategies seemed to generate more interest in the West Midlands than other parts of the country (an issue for which t...

DEFRA recently launched a consultation on significant changes to it’s guidance on how Habitat Regulations Assessments should be carried out, which comes at an interesting time. It is, firstly, not long since DEFRA announced that Natural England and the Environment Agency have been given a new mandate to “prioritise outcomes over process” and “speed up decision-making while maintaining high environ...

Sam Stafford was in London recently and took the opportunity to catch up with old friends of the podcast Mike Kiely , Annie Gingell , Andrew Taylor and Iain Thomson , and new friend of the podcast Claire Tester . In a conversation recorded at Soho Radio they chatted about a few of the hot topics in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning right now. They talk...

New Towns are back in the news because the Government has announced the first formal step in creating the next generation of them with the launch of a public consultation on the draft New Towns Programme and its environmental implications.   The consultation builds on the findings of the New Towns Taskforce report in September 2025 and invites views on how the New Towns Programme will operate, how...

This is the third of a series of episodes being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, Paul Smith . Paul put it to Sam Stafford that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. We very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he is chatting with planning...

Sam Stafford was in Manchester last week and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Lisa Tye , Andrew Johnston and Louise Fountain to discuss some of the issues of the day.  In a conversation recorded at Reform Radio they talked about the imminent changes to appeal guidance; they talked about the design and placemaking PPG consultation; they talked about affordable housing de...

Strategic planning, as Sam Stafford said in the introduction to episode number 157, is back. That episode looked at what shape it is in right now. What have authorities been able to do whilst awaiting the consolidation of the Planning & Infrastructure Act, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill? What the sector did not know just...

Sam Stafford was in Birmingham recently and took the opportunity to record the first ‘catch up’-style episode with some of his friends working in the West Midlands. In a conversation recorded at PodHaus studios, Kathryn Ventham , Myles Wild-Smith , Michelle Simpson-Gallego and Sam enjoyed a rambling conversation that takes in, amongst other things, the extent to which Grey Belt is driving the incr...

In October 2025 Sam Stafford came across a blog by Jack Airey , who is now a Director at Public First but was the Head of Planning at Policy Exchange and subsequently spent a few years inside Number 10 as a Special Advisor to the Prime Minister. The opening line of Jack’s blog was ‘How does bad policy get made?’ and he writes about “the war of attrition that is Whitehall policymaking”; "backbench...

Strategic planning is back. What do we know? We know that Policy PM1 of the revised draft NPPF anticipates the move towards national coverage of Spatial Development Strategies (SDSs), as promised by the end of the parliamentary term, and clarifies their role, content, and relationship to other tiers of the development plan. SDSs are intended to be high-level documents focused on genuinely strategi...

This is the second of Sam Stafford's seasonal offerings which serve as a review of another exciting year in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. Once again Zack Simons kindly bestowed upon Sam the honour of announcing Zack's 2025 #Planoraks Awards on the podcast. Sam met Zack at Soho Radio Studios where and he handed him six golden envelopes, which you w...

This episode sees the return of the 50 Shades of Planning Festive Christmas Quiz. Sam Stafford got together with friends of podcast Mike Kiely , Catriona Riddell , Annie Gingell , Andrew Taylor , Nicola Gooch , Shelly Rouse , Ben Castell and Gilian Macinnes to review what has been another exciting year in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. Based upon a...

Sam Stafford was in Manchester recently and took the opportunity to catch up with old friend of the podcast Charlotte Leach and new friends of the podcast Andrew Johnston and Lisa Tye . Over the course of an hour so they chatted about a few of the hot topics exercising the planning profession at minute. They talked about ‘the next phase of planning reform’ as set out in a written ministerial state...

Empirical evidence is starting to emerge, as speculated upon earlier in the year, that there will indeed be a significant increase in the number of planning applications being submitted this year, certainly for residential development and largely, it is held, driven by the introduction of Grey Belt. TerraQuest , the company behind the Planning Portal, has reported that the number of new homes for...

This is the second of a series of episodes being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, Paul Smith . Paul put it to Sam Stafford that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. Planners here very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he is chatting wi...

In between movin' and shakin' in The Big Smoke recently Sam Stafford took the opportunity to meet a few friends of the podcast at Soho Radio Studios to pick out the highlights from another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. Sam caught up with, and the episode features, old friends of the podcast Simon Ricketts , Annie Gingell , Sh...