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50 Shades of Planning: Episode 135 – A Brief History of Planning 2010-2024

23.10.24

Back in March 2024 friend of the podcast Catriona Riddell gave a lecture at UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning that she called ‘Strategic Planning in England – Where did we go so wrong?’.

Sam Stafford couldn’t be there that night, but Catriona shared her slides on LinkedIn and they read to Sam almost like a ‘Brief History of Planning 2010-2024’, which he thought a good subject for an episode.

As well as Catriona, who was Director of Planning at the South East England Regional Assembly when the Coalition Government came to power in 2010, Sam approached another friend of podcast, Steve Quartermain, Chief Planner between 2008 and 2020, who was also keen to be involved. Sam felt though that a political perspective on things was also needed so he approached Greg Clark.

Greg was appointed Director of Policy for the Conservative Party in 2001 before being elected as MP for Royal Tunbridge Wells in 2005. He has held a number of senior Government roles, including, and of most relevance to planners, Minister for Decentralisation and Cities within the Department for Communities and Local Government between May 2010 and September 2012 and Secretary of State for CLG between May 2015 and July 2016. Greg was also briefly Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities between July 2022 and September 2022.

Greg, pleasingly, was also keen to be involved, and the four of them finally got together at Soho Radio Studios in early October 2024.

There were many, many topics of possible conversation in Sam’s notes for the recording. They did not actually get to the latter part of the 2010-2024 period, so they did not get to, for example, the Standard Method, the 2020 White Paper, and the Theresa Villiers / LURB amendments brouhaha, but that was because they ended up dwelling on arguably the big three topics of that 2010-2024 period, which are the revocation of the Regional Strategies, Localism and the NPPF. They did also touch, right at the end of the conversation, on permitted development rights.

Standby for insights into what Eric Pickles had DCLG staff do on his first day at the Department, the amount of thought that was given to what would replace the RSSs (spoiler alert, not much…) and how the NPPF came into being…

50 Shades of Planning is the podcast by planners and for planners so if you would like to use it as a platform for sharing anything you think that we need to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with me via [email protected].

Cratus Group partners with 50 Shades of Planning podcats series