By common consensus there will a considerable increase in the submission of planning applications this year, certainly applications for residential development and certainly driven by applications on the Grey Belt. Data published by the LPDF in February suggested a 160% increase in the number of planning applications to be submitted by it’s members between January and June 2025 compared to the number submitted between July and December 2024. The key point narrowly is that if an increase in plann...
Jul 05, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 143
It has been another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing rock and roll world of town and country planning... “Thousands of new homes promised to communities will be delivered faster, thanks to major changes to make sure developers deliver on their commitments and do not leave sites half-finished for years”, announced a MHCLG press release on Sunday 25 May. “This government has taken radical steps to overhaul the planning system to get Britain building again after years of inaction...
Jun 21, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 142
For how long Grey Belt remains part of the policy landscape time will tell, but in the here and now it represents very welcome political recognition that the homes the country needs cannot be built without developing land that is currently identified as Green Belt. The irresistible force, it might be said, has started to shift the immoveable object... If that dynamic continues it may prompt questions about what the Green Belt should actually be for and, perhaps, a Royal Commission on it’s future...
Jun 07, 2025•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 141
This episode is a conversation between Sam Stafford and former Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Rt Hon. the Lord Gove. Famous in political circles. Infamous, some might say, in planning circles. The Parliament of 2019-2024 was tumultuous for everybody, but for planning specifically it was an especially tumultuous time. There was the 2020 'Planning for the Future' White Paper, which Mr Gove inherited in 2021, the same year as the Chesham & Amersham byelection....
May 24, 2025•48 min•Ep. 140
When in Manchester recently Sam Stafford took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast David Diggle , Paul Smith , Rebecca Coley and Claire Petricca-Riding and over the course of an hour or so they talked about a few of the hot topics that are exercising the planning profession at the minute. Those hot topics include the widely anticipated spike in planning applications this year; locally-set fees, pre-apps and PPAs; the Flood Risk Sequential Test, NDMPs, and, very briefly towards...
May 10, 2025•52 min•Ep. 139
Over a year on from it becoming mandatory, what is to be made of BNG? On the one hand, according to an open letter signed by a 40-strong coalition of housebuilders and environmental groups to mark the first anniversary, “BNG is a true success story. Over the past year, it has unlocked unprecedented investment in local habitats, while also driving green growth.” On the other hand, only a tenth of respondents to Planning’s consultants survey believed that the system is working well, perhaps becaus...
Apr 26, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 138
Sam Stafford was down in The Big Smoke recently and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Matthew Spry , Simon Ricketts , Hana Loftus , Vicky Payne and Mike Kiely . In a good ol’ fashioned Adam Buxton -style ramblechat they talked about anything and everything. They talked about stat cons; they talked about skills, resources and leadership within LPAs; they talked about the need for efficiency gains in development management to deal with the expected uptick in planning app...
Apr 12, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 137
The fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning has been especially fast-paced, ever-changing and rock and roll of late. How then to try to catch up? Sam Stafford thought that the best way of doing so was to reprise the ‘Labour of Love’ episode that he published back in August of last year. Here then you will hear elements of nine conversations recorded online between friends of the podcast old and new about nine themes of the Government’s crystalising reform agen...
Mar 29, 2025•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 136
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 Co...
Oct 19, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 134
Saturday 12 October 2024 marks 100 days of the new Labour Government. In anticipation of this milestone Landmark Chambers and Town Legal hosted a seminar in London this week to provide an in-depth review of Labour's first 100 days in power and the impact on planning law and policy. The session was recorded so that Sam Stafford could share it by way of the 50 Shades podcast and planners will be glad that it was recorded because it contains analysis and insight of the highest order. This episode i...
Oct 12, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 134
Last week, on NPPF deadline day, Sam Stafford was in Manchester and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Katie Wray , David Diggle , Greg Dickson , Mark Parkinson and Claire Petricca-Riding at the studios of Reform Radio . Conscious that the podcast has covered the revised NPPF in episodes 128 and 131, they talked about some of the other current hot planning topics. They talked about brownfield passports and why existing tools in the box are not being used already; they t...
Oct 05, 2024•53 min•Ep. 133
"‘The moment has come’: pro-building Labour YIMBYs are set to raise the roof" was the title of a piece in the Observer ahead of the Labour Party Conference (link below). For many of the most ambitious of the new cohort of Labour MPs, this is the fashionable campaign of the moment, not for economic growth but as a social justice movement – and one that many of the new millennials entering parliament hope to stake their careers on. Inside Labour it is not a left-right divide, but some of its champ...
Sep 21, 2024•54 min•Ep. 132
If you have listened to episodes 125 and 128 you will know Sam Stafford sought to cover, pre-publication, what could and should be in the new version of NPPF. With the consultation deadline now starting to loom large, this episode seeks to cover what is actually in it. Sam was in London earlier this week and caught up with friends of the podcast Andrew Taylor , Hashi Mohamed , Vicky Payne and Simon Ricketts at Soho Radio Studios. They will need no introduction to regular listeners, but for new l...
Sep 07, 2024•56 min•Ep. 131
In Hitting the High Notes episodes Sam Stafford chats to preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors about the six planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals. And, so that Listeners can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career Sam also asks his guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period. Think of it as town planning’s equivalent of Desert Island Discs. Unlike Desert Island Discs you wi...
Aug 31, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 130
To rebuild or to retrofit? That is the question posed by former Secretary of State Michael Gove’s intervention in planning applications for the redevelopment of M&S’ Oxford Street store and the former Museum of London building. According to the Climate Change Committee, direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions from buildings account for 23% of the UK total. How can we create energy-efficient, carbon neutral and climate resilient new buildings and what is needed to accelerate the decarbon...
Aug 17, 2024•51 min•Ep. 129
Sam Stafford has mentioned previously that the podcast would consider the new Government’s reform agenda and this is an attempt at doing so. The specifics of the NPPF consultation will be covered in more depth in due course, but what Listeners will hear in this jam-packed extravaganza of an episode is an exploration of that reform agenda in it’s broader sense. In anticipation of the NPPF, Sam invited some of the Shades alumni to discuss some of the policy areas of most interest to them and how t...
Aug 03, 2024•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 128
Long-serving Listeners might recall that for Episode 6 of 50 Shades of Planning Sam Stafford published a chat with Euan Mills , then of the Connected Places Catapult , on the potential for digital innovation, urban data, and user-centred design to improve the planning system. Euan, now CEO and co-founder of Blocktype, got in touch with Sam Stafford earlier this year and asked if he could put together an episode on the progress that has been made over the past five years towards this aim. This wa...
Jul 20, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 127
One of the new Labour Government’s manifesto pledges is the construction of 1.5 million new homes between now and the end of this new parliament. “We will ensure local communities continue to shape housebuilding in their area, but where necessary Labour will not be afraid to make full use of intervention powers to build the houses we need”, the manifesto states, which strikes a markedly different tone to the emphatically localist one adopted by the Conservatives upon entering office back in 2010...
Jul 06, 2024•59 min•Ep. 126
With a General Election now imminent Sam Stafford thought that it might be interesting to try to compare what is being offered by the main political parties in relation to housing, planning and development with what the housing, planning and development sector would like to see being offered. In a conversation recorded at Outset Studios in Shoreditch Sam speaks to new friends of the podcast Richard Blyth , Tony Mulhall, Marie Chadwick and Ian Fletcher , and old friend of the podcast Paul Brockle...
Jun 22, 2024•54 min•Ep. 125
In February 2024 Planning published a special report by Joey Gardiner entitled ‘how cost-saving consultants disrupted council planning services’. Cash-strapped councils have been following management consultants’ advice to split up their planning teams. Staff have been put into central departments to handle additional non-planning tasks. But the upshot, say critics, has been declining performance and a staff exodus. Joey’s piece highlighted the tumult at Tandridge, which in 2020 was formally thr...
Jun 15, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 124
When Sam Stafford first covered nutrient neutrality, in February 2021, he described the process of eutrophication as a bit like the podcast itself: a little niche, but very important. When Sam published a second episode in September 2022 it had grown in importance to the extent that Prime Minister Liz Truss had pledged to "scrap nutrient neutrality rules". A Government press release issued in August 2023 stated that “through an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB), the Gove...
Jun 01, 2024•58 min•Ep. 123
What are we to make of neighbourhood planning? Friend of the podcast Ben Castell considers it a “grassroots planning revolution”. Perhaps less favourably it conjures for others images of corduroy and tweed-clad councillors convening a parish council working group to thwart plans for an incinerator or, worse still, new housing. With neighbourhood planning now part of the furniture, but with the current opposition and possible next Government talking about ‘taking planning up a level’, Sam Staffor...
May 18, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 122
Sam Stafford was in London recently and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Catriona Riddell , Shelly Rouse and Nicola Gooch at Soho Radio Studios . One topic, the hot topic of the past few weeks, dominated the conversation. “Labour pledges housebuilding drive on Grey Belt with ‘golden rules’ to boost public services, affordable homes and improve green spaces”, so announced a press release dated 19 April. Keir Starmer has today set out five ‘golden rules’ for Grey Belt h...
May 04, 2024•47 min•Ep. 121
Sam Stafford was in Manchester recently and took the opportunity to catch up with friends of the podcast Greg Dickson and Claire Petricca-Riding . During a conversation recorded at Reform Radio they talked about another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. They talked about RPs not bidding for Section 106 sites, they talked about the 'Accelerated Planning System' consultation, so the proposals for the new Section 73B, the ten week...
Apr 20, 2024•46 min•Ep. 120
In Hitting the High Notes episodes Sam Stafford chats to preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors about the six planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals. And, so that Listeners can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career Sam also asks his guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period. Think of it as town planning’s equivalent of Desert Island Discs. Unlike Desert Island Discs you wi...
Apr 13, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 119
The Prime Minister recently announced plans to "turbocharge" development within England's largest towns and cities to mark a Government consultation on strengthening planning policy for brownfield development. Sam Stafford thought then that now would be a good time to share a conversation that he recorded online in August 2023 with old friends of the podcast David Milner and Rebecca Coley , and new friend of the podcast Mark Aylward , about the redevelopment of big box retail parks. The prompt f...
Mar 23, 2024•49 min•Ep. 118
This episode is a ramblechat that Sam Stafford recorded in London with friends of the podcast Hashi Mohamed , Simon Ricketts , Nicola Gooch and Andrew Taylo r during which they reflected on another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. The conversation takes in the back-dating of Section 106 indexation and what that says about local authority finances; the need to consider PPAs, statutory consultees and performance targets in the r...
Mar 09, 2024•52 min•Ep. 117
Building GP surgeries, schools and roads is not just difficult it is so difficult, according to no less of an expert on such matters than the Prime Minister, as to be a reason to not even contemplate growing existing towns and cities. In introducing recent proposals to put “rocket boosters” under construction in existing built-up areas, Rishi Sunak was quoted in The Times as saying that “We need to build homes in the places where people need and want them. There’s little point trying to force la...
Feb 24, 2024•53 min•Ep. 116
This episode is another in the Hitting The High Notes series. If you have not listened to one before the basic proposition is that Sam Stafford chats to preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors about the six planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals. And, so that Listeners can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career Sam also asks his guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period. Thi...
Feb 03, 2024•55 min•Ep. 115
At the kind invitation of Landmark Chambers and Town Legal, Sam Stafford was in London this week to contribute to a seminar on the NPPF update, which, eagle-eyed 50 Shades Listeners no doubt spotted, emerged as part of a cavalcade of Planning Reform Day announcements before Christmas. The seminar was over-subscribed and so was recorded in order that it could be shared more widely as a podcast. This episode features: Rupert Warren KC talking about the implications of the NPPF for housing delivery...
Jan 20, 2024•58 min•Ep. 114
