Planorama

Planorama

Author: Samuel Stafford October 25, 2025 Duration: 1:04:21

In between movin' and shakin' in The Big Smoke recently Sam Stafford took the opportunity to meet a few friends of the podcast at Soho Radio Studios to pick out the highlights from another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning.

Sam caught up with, and the episode features, old friends of the podcast Simon Ricketts, Annie Gingell, Shelly Rouse and Hana Loftus, and new friend of the podcast Hayley White.

Over the course of an hour or so they talked about affordable housing delivery, specifically the constraints on the use of grant funding by RPs and the (then) rumoured changes to affordable housing thresholds in London. They talked about C.G. Fry and the implications of that Supreme Court decision. They talked in the context of a second letter from the Housing & Planning Minister to the Planning Inspectorate about local plan coverage and whether stepped trajectories should be seen a pragmatic response to changing circumstances or an exercise in cynical can-kicking. And towards the end they touched on National Development Management Policies.

Some accompanying reading.

London Stalling

Will Labour’s London housing boost plan work?

Residential development in London

Local Plan examinations: letter to the Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate (October 2025)

Why stepped housing requirements aren’t justified and should be avoided

What does planning permission *really* get you: CG Fry in the Supreme Court — #planoraks

Autumn Budget 2025 - LPDF submission to HMT

Some accompanying viewing.

Panorama – The race to build 1.5 million homes

The Planners are Coming

Some accompanying listening.

The Rolling Stones -Jigsaw Puzzle

Any other business.

50 Shades T-Shirts!

If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning you will have heard Clive Betts say that...

'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'.

Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here.

Sam is on Bluesky and Instagram. His blog contains a link to his newsletter.


Samuel Stafford hosts 50 Shades of Planning, a podcast that digs into the often perplexing world of the English planning system. Rather than offering dry policy lectures, these conversations embrace the sector's inherent complexities and occasional absurdities. The aim is to provide a wide-ranging view, bringing in diverse voices from across the fields of planning, property, design, and development. You'll hear from practitioners, thinkers, and critics, each sharing their unique experiences and perspectives on how places are shaped. A recurring series within the podcast, titled 'Hitting The High Notes', features in-depth discussions with leading figures, examining pivotal career moments and influential projects. These talks are structured around six key planning milestones, offering a concrete framework for understanding professional journeys and systemic challenges. By weaving together themes from government, business, arts, and social sciences, this podcast reveals how planning sits at a crowded intersection of politics, economics, and community life. Tune in for thoughtful, sometimes surprising, explorations of the forces that decide what gets built, where, and why.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 164

50 Shades of Planning
Podcast Episodes
Crosstown Traffic [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:23
The need for people to travel and the way in which they can travel has changed dramatically in a short period of time and, early on during the Coronavirus crisis especially, there was a sense that this change had the pot…
Rules of Engagement [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:46
The grinding gears of the planning system need to be kept moving. On that most people can agree. Applying a little bit of lubricant within the bits of the system that largely pass the public by, extending consents and fl…
Everybody Needs Good Neighbours [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:40
Where does the recent run of local plan failures at St Albans, Sevenoaks, Wealden and Chiltern & South Bucks leave the Duty to Cooperate (DtC)? As well as being bad law it seemed obvious to most practitioners at the time…
APC, easy as 1,2,3. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:58
Sam Stafford, wary halfway through his career of becoming a world-weary, cynical member of the town planning establishment, seeks to recapture some of his zest by chatting in this episode to three newly and soon-to-be qu…
Stay Alert > Keep Planning > Improve Lives [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:35
Sam Stafford gets some of the 50 Shades gang back together for the type of Friday afternoon, Adam Buxton-style ramblechat that would have taken place in the pub a few months ago. Will the post-pandemic world really not b…
The CaMKOx Arc. Behind the curve? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:57
In a 2016 interim report on the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor, or the Arc, the National Infrastructure Commission identified the area as having “the potential to be “the UK’s Silicon Valley – a world-renowned c…
The London Plan. Capital Punishment? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:29
Is there any substance to Robert Jenrick’s criticism of Sadiq Khan’s London Plan or is it just the victim of some Punch and Judy-style, blue on red oneupmanship? Sam Stafford discusses this question, and, if devolution a…
Green Belt. Sacred Cow? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:54
'I began to see what a sacred cow the Green Belt has become' said Minister for Housing & Local Government Richard Crossman in 1964. The Green Belt is a political behemoth that has long loomed over the planning system. In…
Planning and Coronavirus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:28
Robert Jenrick set out on 12 March 2020 proposals “to bring Britain’s planning system into the 21st century as part of plans to get the country building”. Within a week it was announced that schools were closing and loca…