Over the last decade I have been both a PAE staff member and volunteer. The former primarily involved helping groups prepare neighbourhood plans while the latter involved running a series of training courses for parish councils on ‘Planning for Non Planners’. It has been an enjoyable, educational, stimulating, frustrating, infuriating and ultimately very rewarding experience.
Armed with a copy of Stuart Maconie’s book ‘Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England’ I have travelled on behalf of PAE from the Cotswolds to the Peak District via Shakespeare’s country, the Lincolnshire Wolds and inner city Birmingham. I have attended meetings in town halls, village halls, pubs, historic buildings, assorted religious buildings, schools, garden centres, mobile home sites, converted barns, windmills, under the famous apple tree where Isaac Newton lived, arboretum, motorway service stations, Waitrose cafe, Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, a restored custard factory, saddlers, libraries, upstairs studies, living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens and conservatories.
I have been offered tea, coffee, alcohol, water, biscuits, cake, sandwiches, salad, a plate of whitebait, a light supper, a bed for the night, and sometimes nothing at all. However sometimes I have had to buy and make all the refreshments, put out the tables and chairs, set up the IT equipment and then later on cleared up, washed up, dried up and locked up.
I have delivered training sessions to more than a hundred and less than three. In the audience were MPs, assorted councillors, planners, planning students, architects, surveyors, engineers, policemen, professors, teachers, tax inspectors, soldiers, publicans, accountants, various representatives from disadvantaged communities, lots of retired people and an alternative therapist who said I was a remarkably calm person under the circumstances.
I have shaken with the cold, nearly passed out with the heat, and literally got soaked to the skin. I have finally had very late nights driving home when I have sometimes found myself talking to the DJ on the radio and the kind lady on the satnav guiding me safely home. Such is life working for PAE.
However I have successfully guided community groups and parish councils, fielding difficult questions and often telling them what they don’t want to hear. I have provided technical advice and counselling to local authority officers and sometimes acted as the honest broker between them and their local communities. I have even sat on a sofa in a show home with the then Planning Minister discussing the merits of neighbourhood planning over a cream cake. I have apparently also had a name check in Parliament during a discussion on neighbourhood planning. Perhaps most satisfying was to see a resident on maternity leave volunteer to lead the preparation of a neighbourhood plan for her estate despite having little knowledge of the planning system – but this led to her becoming a local councillor where she then served 3 years as Chair of the Planning Committee before being promoted to the Cabinet.
But most important is the collective outcome of PAE’s involvement. PAE is a team of staff and volunteers that collaborate to produce presentations, materials and toolkits to patiently guide individuals and communities through the complexities of the planning system. It facilitates learning and provides empowerment such that people can better engage in the planning system and more effectively contribute to decision making – be that commenting on a planning application or draft local plan, or producing their own neighbourhood plan.
The vast majority of people that I have encountered are therefore extremely grateful for the knowledge, expertise and planning experience that PAE has imparted, whether they are residents from a deprived neighbourhood or rural dwellers living in a remote village. Perhaps the most gratifying thing is that they recognise that the planning system involves decision making that is rarely black and white. As a consequence of their involvement with PAE they will often remark that they now have far more empathy with the planning profession trying to grapple with a complex planning system that tries to balance a number of competing objectives.