Planning Permission Required: More Tales from the Development Frontline

Arthur arrived at his first day induction by stabbing a nicotine-stained finger at an Ordnance Survey sheet and announcing that you would need to love maps, understand them, and marry them if necessary. That was 1985. The radiator wheezed. The filing cabinet rattled every time someone mentioned a Section 52 Agreement. And Janet — sardonic, encyclopaedic, and in possession of a teabag she carried in her pocket — looked up from her notes long enough to explain that the Chair of Planning had just been hit by a scone at the Site Allocations Exhibition.

He cried.

This is the second volume of Steve Hesmondhalgh's planning memoirs — forty years of development control, enforcement, appeals, parish councils, public consultations, and the full catalogue of characters that only local government can produce. The developer who submitted plans for a garage labelled "Storage Unit for Personal Items Including Reclining Chair and Television." The enforcement officer who framed a photograph of a demolished wall. The client who paid for planning advice in bathroom tiles. The developer with a loose affiliation to the travelling community, an encyclopaedic knowledge of greyhound bloodlines, and an unapologetic approach to client entertainment.

Funny, affectionate, and occasionally despairing — this is what planning actually looks like from the inside. Not the policy framework. Not the appeal decisions. The stuff underneath: the tea-stained maps, the handwritten objections on scented paper, the committee nights that stretch on long past the point where anyone can remember what was being decided.

For anyone who has ever been in a planning meeting and thought — someone should write this down.

Someone has.