Well, what a year it’s been, both professionally and personally. We don’t often find time to reflect on achievements, and we rarely, if ever, pat ourselves on the back. So for our annual December round-up, we thought we’d shine a festive light on some of our sparklers from 2022. Hope you enjoy:
National Park Cities – have you ever heard of these? No. Neither had we, until we read about them in Rob Hopkins Book ‘From What Is to What If, his manifesto to reclaim and unleash the creative power of our imaginations. Inspired by the model of our rural National Parks, which aim to promote our … Read More
Happy New Year, let’s hope it’s a good one. With a refreshed vigour for prioritising the climate crisis throughout our work, we’re going to use the year ahead to look at areas of the English planning system that support biodiversity, environmental protection and sustainability. So for our first blog offering of 2022, we take a … Read More
Following on from our 2018 blog highlighting the challenges of building homes on small brownfield sites, we thought it would be useful to take another look to see if the situation is any better than it was. Current planning policy promotes urban living, building more densely/higher to achieve the most efficient use of land, and … Read More
An issue that crops up on a regular basis for new development irrespective of size and scale and now with the added test for the Prior Approval conversion of existing office buildings, is ‘light’ – how much is there?; is there too much, enough or too little?; does the development block anyone else’s light?; does … Read More
The Planning profession is an ever changing beast. Always under review and alteration. Constantly vilified for being too slow, too fast, too restrictive, not restrictive enough, too bureaucratic, too full of NIMBY’s, and so the list goes on….. In the midst of all the competing views of Planning as both a process and a profession, … Read More
Welcome to 2021, never have we been so pleased to embrace a new year. Whoever would have imagined when we introduced our Planning Ventures manifesto back in January 2020, that the 12 months would have played out in such a challenging way, and been a real test of those pledges. As everyone, we’re desperate to … Read More
As this is our last blog of 2020, a year that has brought significant challenges for all of us, we thought we would take a moment to reflect on where we’re going and the changes we would like to see going forward. Undoubtedly, there is a period of significant change coming based on our individual … Read More
What issues can and can’t be covered by planning objection As part of the democratic application process we have a right to comment on the impact of a scheme, be it to offer support for the proposals or to object. We are consulted either formally through a local news publication, by a site notice, through … Read More
This Spring, we’re planning a sunrise-to-sunset 28 mile walk across all of Bristol’s bridges, following the Bristol Civic society route . It’s more of an awareness-raiser, so look out for us in our orange t-shirts and come and step-in for a mile or two as we pound the city streets. We’ve got an art auction … Read More