Senior Consultant Dan is currently a Senior Lecturer in Planning and course leader for the Property Development and Planning course at Oxford Brookes University, and a former councillor in Oxfordshire. As a councillor he has 25 years of experience in local government as a Town Councillor in Bicester for 24 …

Senior Consultant Chris has been a Liberal Democrat county and district councillor for over 30 years, most recently leader of St Albans District Council and chair of its Planning Policy & Climate Committee. He has considerable experience in local plan making and planning policy in general. He stepped down from …

Consultant Patrick is a communications and marketing consultant with more than 20 years of property industry experience and a track record of delivering strategic campaigns that influence key stakeholders and deliver commercial results. He brings a wealth of experience to Chelgate having worked for numerous housebuilders, institutional investors, and professional …

Welcome to our New Year 2024 issue of Planning ahead.  We enter 2024 with some trepidation: the economy is in the doldrums, we have the NPPF reforms and the prospect of a General Election, probably in the autumn. There is too much uncertainty which no one likes. At Chelgate Local, we finished …

The secretary of state, Michael Gove MP, has said he wants to see local communities involved more in planning policy and planning application decisions. This brought a sharp intake of breath from developers and councillors alike as most communities appear opposed to anything to do with development. This is because …

Good and bad news for the economy: a further drop in inflation and interest rates held again are the good, but amendments to growth figures showing that the economy is perilously close to recession is the bad. The outlook is that any recession is likely to be shallow and short-lived, …

We are not going to go into huge detail about the NPPF changes as this is the role of planning consultants, but we have picked out some key areas. Michael Gove MP made his speech about the NPPF consultation response on the day Parliament rose for the Christmas break (19 December), …

Park Homes are becoming increasingly popular. According to the House of Commons Library there are 85,000 park homes on 2,000 licensed sites across the country. Despite their popularity, almost no councils make provision for park homes in their local plans. This despite them being an acceptable form of development in …