Positive Purposeful Planning with Graham Stallwood

In a year where we want to spread the love for Planning as a profession and, dare we say it, even as a vocation, we’ve been asking Planners from a variety of backgrounds and different parts of the industry why they think it’s important. Our next participant is Graham Stallwood, current Director of Operations with PINS, who fell for planning as a teenager doing work experience at Essex County Council and whose planning journey since has taken him via the LPA’s of the Home Counties and London Boroughs to the RTPI South-East, to garner an enviable breadth and depth of experience in the industry. He reminds us that planning is essentially about people, and is fiercely motivated about making people’s lives better in different ways.

So take 5 minutes to learn about Grahams evident passion for the profession…

Why (and how) planning for you? What’s been your path?

I grew up in Chelmsford, Essex, which changed a great deal through those years, and continues to. I was fascinated by how the town was changing, why, and how it developed from being a small Roman town to the vibrant town in which I grew up. My geography teacher recognised my interest and introduced me to town planning, then I spent time at Essex County Council on work experience. I loved it, knew it was for me and never looked back. More work experience followed, and I ended up studying at the University of Sheffield. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to work but ended up working in development management at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire and then Chiltern, Buckinghamshire. I thrived on the high pace and working with lots of applicants, agents, colleagues, consultees and stakeholders. At Chiltern I fell into team management with a young team. I thought I needed more case experience so moved to Windsor and Maidenhead where I led the Council’s work during the construction phase of the Ascot Racecourse redevelopment and worked in the major developments team, before becoming a team manager again and then Development Control Manager. I led the team through a performance improvement programme before being attracted to Kensington and Chelsea. It was on the verge of being designated for poor decision making performance and wanted someone to lead their own improvement. It’s an amazing place to work and the Council had been rated as excellent, but it could have lost that rating because of the planning performance. “This job is for me!” I thought, and thankfully they agreed. I had the best three or so years of my career there and had an amazing team. I implemented a first class pre-application advice service, improvements to the way we handled applications, made our files open and live on the internet for transparency and was involved in some amazing schemes. I was then the Chief Planner for four years. Outside of work I volunteered with RTPI, firstly in the regions and as Chair of RTPI South East, and then nationally on its General Assembly. I ended up being elected a trustee and (with other trustees) being legally responsible for the organisation and its charitable objectives for about nine years, including chairing the Board of Trustees for just over two years.

What is your current role?

I’m the Director of Operations at the Planning Inspectorate, covering all our casework across the range of planning appeals, local plans, national infrastructure, rights of way, common land and the other specialist casework we handle.

I provide strategic operational leadership to the inspectors and others making decisions and recommendations, as well as the professionals supporting them: planners, environmentalists and operational delivery support professionals. Amongst other things, I’m leading work to improve our performance and the development of our first gov.uk digital public services.

What do you love about your current role and what frustrates you about it?

To me, planning is essentially about people. The moment any of us forget that we’re a lost cause. I love that my role involves working with loads of interesting, passionate people with different perspectives, most of whom are motivated by making people’s lives better in different ways.

I work with lots of planners and people from related professions both in and outside the organisation, but I also work with a lot of customers, stakeholders and people behind the scenes who work in digital, finance, project management and so on. They are just as motivated as I am by the Planning Inspectorate’s role in a fair planning system.

I maybe shouldn’t admit this as I love planning and planners and I am one too. But planners can be very frustrating. There are many excellent planners out there, but too often we can be our own worst enemies.

What frustrates me is that planners too often forget the bigger picture we came into the job to achieve. Too often I hear planners looking for perfection and risking the investment and benefits they are trying to secure. Too often I see planners acting as administrators with consultee responses rather than applying their own professional judgement to schemes. Too often I see planners bogged down rather than holding the vision and bringing people together to achieve it.?

What is the least understood part of your job?

Many of our customers and wider communities don’t fully understand the Planning Inspectorate’s role, and we need to do more to explain it. We’d prefer to see fewer appeals and more decisions staying locally in communities. Our inspectors are too often criticised for making what some see as “the wrong decision” when they have applied local and national policies. Those policies may not say what communities think they say or should say, but inspectors implement policy and don’t design it. Making policy is the job of government and local government.

So, when an inspector is examining a local plan for soundness they are applying the national legal and policy tests. Parliament approves National Policy Statements which are used for national infrastructure applications. In appeals inspectors apply national and local policies. If inspector decisions aren’t what people expect, then the policies need greater focus, so they achieve what is intended.

What’s the hardest part of your job?

Being patient. The list of things I want to do grows all the time. Sustainable change takes time as it’s just as much about human behaviour and the way we think as it is about what we do.

It means that important things like improving diversity in the Planning Inspectorate and the wider industry, or building digital services for users of the planning system takes so much longer than it feels like it should.

What’s the most challenging thing you have done to date?

Probably like many others, being a parent and trying to work out how to do it, or how not to do it. It’s a huge exercise of trial and error which tests all your thinking and really challenges you about who you are and the assumptions you make.

What’s been the most favourite project you’ve worked on to date, or the one of which you’re most proud?

I’m really proud of the last RTPI elections I was involved in as Chair of the Board of Trustees in 2018. The election slogan was “Be the change you want to see” and it was hugely successful in transforming the members who both stood for posts and were elected. More than 50% of the General Assembly was female, we had a much more ethnically diverse group of volunteers across our governance and the age range of active volunteer members broadened further. It was a real milestone and one which made a huge difference in helping the RTPI’s diversity and inclusivity work over the last few years.

What do you think the greatest achievement of the Planning System has been to date?

That the post-war planning system still exists, albeit much altered, is itself a major achievement and testament not only to those who created it but all those who have worked in a constantly adapting environment since.

A very close second for me would be the new towns programme. Yes, we know challenges some of those towns are facing. But fundamentally new towns responded to the urgent need for places for people to live and work and showcased what could be achieved with vision and leadership.?

What do you see as the key challenges and opportunities for the profession over the next few years?

There are many around climate change, housing, energy and so on. But the planning profession’s biggest challenge is relevancy to, and understanding within, the communities we serve. The planning profession should be at the heart of leading difficult conversations about how we will address the challenges we face together, bringing people together with a shared vision and leading communities through the process of achieving the vision. Where I live, and in many other places, the planning system is instead seen as the way to stop things or a hurdle to get over when you want something yourself. The key challenge is to return to the profession being at the heart of how we plan and deliver for people and places with true vision.??

Planning hacks - what advice would you give to anyone considering a career in planning? What attributes and skills will they need? What rewards might they reap??

Go for it, you will not regret it. Don’t confine yourself to one sector or role. There are so many different types of role across public, private, third and academic sectors to try and it’s much easier to move between sectors than it used to be. They will all broaden your horizons and make your experience more rounded. The most important attributes you can have are working with other people well, being inquisitive and always remembering what you’re trying to achieve. As with any role, there will be huge rewards from supporting those around you to grow. But as a planner you also get to see developments you worked on, see the benefits of the improvements you secured and hopefully know that other people will benefit for generations.

If not a planner, what would you want to be?

My careers adviser suggested I should be a Prison Officer, but I’m not sure that’s really for me. I was only a teenager when I fell for planning so it’s hard to imagine where I would have ended as alternative. Teaching and journalism were both careers I toyed with, but I doubt either would have given me the same satisfaction.

Where would you like to be right now?

Walking along the cliffs, looking out to see, smelling the sea air, looking forward to a fresh Cornish pasty and a pint at the next village.