“Framework Phooey”

When the NPPF was launched way back in March 2012, I was asked if I would play the role of ‘Rosemary the telephone operator’ and don a headset to answer some queries  (for anyone unfamiliar with the Hanna-Barbera cartoon canon,  Rosemary  is from the 70′s classic  ’Hong Kong Phooey’). Naturally, I accepted. As far as I [...]

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What you’ll get from our planning reform events – spoiler alert!

No matter how hard we try we will never be able to answer all of your questions about planning reform. We held a ‘dry run’ event this week to check that the presentations in our upcoming event series will meet audience expectations. The events are packed full of speakers with different perspectives on changes to [...]

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PAS – past, present and future

As PAS enters its 7th year, I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve achieved, what we’ve learnt and what we need to do next.  It’s certainly been fun for me – but has this model – a nationally funded, local government improvement organisation for planning – worked for our funders and for you? The fact that [...]

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Who is your editor-in-chief?

Over the last few years, in meetings and such I always introduce myself by saying ‘I look after the PAS website’. But after reading this excellent missive from Paul Ford I’ve decided that from now on I’m ‘Editor in Chief’ at PAS. Happy to plead guilty to possessing: “…the willingness to schedule the living sh*t [...]

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Survival skills for planners

I heard Greg Clark, Minister for Decentralization speak earlier this week and while its clearly it’s all change again on Planet Planning, he was enthusiastic (he said) about planners taking on a more facilitative role in making sure that the development  investment delivered the place that communities want.  Unpicking development plans and reinventing them to [...]

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New on the PAS website: simple events form / does this help?

A quick post to let you know about two new bits that went live on the PAS website today. Does this help? You can stare at page impression and visitor data until you are blue in the face and you still won’t know whether a new addition to the website is any good. And for [...]

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Lessons so far – Managing Excellent Planning Services (MEPS)

MEPS is 10 months old now and we have 7 benchmarking groups made up of 30 authorities. As expected, this project gets more and more interesting as we add more sets of data into it. Its early days – I am not quite ready to share individual authorities’ improvement stories, but I can start sharing [...]

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This Abstract String Of Words Is Important

I’m back at work after a few weeks away and in the thick of editing stuff in preparation for our email bulletin that goes out this week.  It’s good to have a break and come back to this stuff with fresh eyes. The two docs I’ve gone through so far were chock of full of [...]

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Website content categories

Just a quick update to my earlier post on our move to a new website platform before I disappear on two weeks leave.  Having moved a bunch of the content over I became increasingly frustrated with the categories I’d set out and annoyed by the lack of obvious meaning or direction in the ‘Knowledge’ heading…  so [...]

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Planning Performance

It’s possible to get a bit of a feel for the planning zeitgeist from some of the email requests we receive. Increasingly over the last months we’ve had requests for help from people wanting to understand their costs, their performance and whether they stack up in relation to their peers. We are currently working on [...]

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