The Friday Five 02.09.22
1. PLANNING OFFICERS (VARIOUS ROLES), STOKE ON TRENT CITY COUNCIL
Location: Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs
The jobs: “We are recruiting to the following roles:
- Assistant planning officer
- Planning officer
- Planning enforcement officer x 2
“The roles above sit within housing, development & growth and you would report directly to the principal planning officer.
“Within each role, you will deal with the processing of planning applications and this will include undertaking validation, site visits, assessing proposals, negotiating with applicants and preparing written reports. You will also provide planning advice to members of the public, over the telephone and in person and carry out research on areas of land or specific buildings in relation to historical records and policies.
“Stoke-on-Trent is a reborn economic powerhouse, rapidly developing as a new core city, offering fair opportunities for all with dynamic residents enjoying independent, happy and healthy lives.”
Fun fact: After the Palace of Westminster – home of the UK Parliament – was destroyed by fire in 1834, the architect Charles Barry was appointed to design its replacement. He in turn appointed the Gothic Revivalist Augustus Pugin to design the decorative elements.
Among these were the floor tiles that would cover many of the main halls, passageways and staircases in the new building. Barry was adamant that these should “be formed of encaustic tiles, bearing heraldic decorations and other enrichments in colours, laid in margins and compartments in combination with polished British marbles”.
Encaustic tiling was an ancient process for creating elaborate patterns within tiles that had been revived in the 1830s by Samuel Wright of Staffordshire. So it was to The Potteries that Pugin went in search of a manufacturer for the new tiles. Here he found the firm of Mintons in Stoke, which had the skills and resources to create the tiles on the desired scale – 75,000 were manufactured in total.
The result, at the new building’s opening in 1852, was majestic: throughout the six main halls and linking corridors and staircases at the Palace of Westminster, the tiles form striking patterns using imagery that includes the lion of England, the flower emblems of the constituent parts of the Uganda mottos in Latin and English in Gothic script, in a variety of carefully chosen colours.
The intervening 170 years have not been kind to the magnificent tiles. Nowadays, the House of Parliament receive a million visitors a year. The wear on the tiles has been considerable and repair and replacement is challenging and costly. A recent conservation project has seen a number of decent quality ones removed, however, and – amazingly – they’re on sale in the Parliament shop. If you have a cool £200 to spare, you can have an original Minton tile in a lovely gift box.
2. PLANNING OFFICER/ASSISTANT PLANNING OFFICER (DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT) EXMOOR NATIONAL PARK
Location: Dulverton, Somerset
The job: “As a planning officer / assistant planning officer, you will assist in delivering an effective, efficient and community-focused planning service, which seeks to conserve and enhance the natural and built environment of the National Park.
“You will process applications for planning, listed buildings, advertisements and more within deadlines, checking all details are correct before registering, visiting all sites for detailed assessment.
“Ensuring design, policy, and statutory consultee requirements are considered, you will negotiate with applicants to agree changes in design, input information on each application into the planning database, make recommendations and draft of reports to present to the planning committee.
“You will be the first point of contact for public enquiries and offer guidance and advice on the acceptability of applications.
“Exmoor National Park Authority manages a unique and beautiful part of the country. Our vision is to ensure Exmoor National Park has a thriving living landscape and is a place where people can enjoy and benefit from Exmoor’s special qualities and sustainable communities.”
Fun fact: Many, many stories, myths and legends are attached to Exmoor, so evocative is it. Among the most entertaining is the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s explanation for the unfinished state of his famous Kubla Khan poem.
At the time of its composition, in 1797, Coleridge was staying at a farmhouse between the villages of Lynton and Porlock, close to the North Devon coast (and within Exmoor). Inspired by a dream – although it may well have been an opium-induced haze – he was feverishly writing out the poem that came to him in full while he slept. It was to be his masterpiece, a work of imaginative genius.
Sadly, he was disturbed while writing by the arrival of “a person from Porlock”. And what remained of the poem beyond its first 54 lines was lost forever.
So the story goes. In truth it’s more likely that Coleridge either just got stuck but liked what he’d written so far and published it; or, more likely, the work was deliberately presented as an unfinished ‘fragment’. It’s a poem about the discovery of an evocative remnant of a lost civilisation and about the fragility of creative ambition. It’s only right that it should be ‘unfinished’.
In other words, the “person from Porlock” is a playful literary device and Coleridge was having a bit of a joke at everyone else’s expense. A ‘person from Porlock’ has now become a common explanation for any kind of disruption to creative processes.
For the record, here are the first few lines of Kubla Khan. Chances are you're familiar with them:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Evocative, eh?
3. GRADUATE CASE OFFICER (PLANNING) – SERVICE DELIVERY X2, SOUTH SOMERSET DISTRICT COUNCIL
Location: Yeovil, Somerset
The job: “We have an exciting opportunity for two graduate case officers to join us. Fixed term for 12 months initially.
“This is an ideal opportunity to learn all aspects of the planning process within the case services team, utilise your degree and transform your education into valuable workplace skills. This post is particularly suited for those embarking on a planning career.
“Applicants should have an awareness of planning objectives and principles applicable to development management and planning enforcement. You will be working towards managing a varied caseload of householder, minor applications and enforcement cases. You will be required to work and negotiate with applicants, write reports and make recommendations. You will also be required to visit sites where appropriate. Full training for this role will be given.”
Fun fact: More Romantic fragments. The 60-hectare grounds of Barwick Park near Yeovil, an 18th-century landscaped pleasure grounds, contain four magnificence ‘follies’ which are considered among the finest in the UK.
Follies, in keeping with the fashion for Romantic ruins that inspired Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, were monuments and buildings built deliberately as ruins and fragments. They were felt to lend a desirable sense of poignancy to any landscaped garden or estate – and they were frequently quite eccentric.
At Barwick Park, the four mark the northern, eastern, southern and western boundaries of the estate and they are, respectively:
- The Fish Tower, a 15-metre high cylindrical tower made of rubble that once held a fish weather vane in an iron cage.
- Jack the Treacle Eater, a monumental rubble-stone arch surmounted by a circular tower with a parapet and a conical stone roof. This is crowned with a statue of ‘Jack’. It’s actually Mercury, the Roman messenger of the gods, but the story goes that the Messiter family, who some think built the follies, employed a messenger boy called Jack, who ate treacle to give him the energy to run to London. Yeovil to London is about 130 miles so this may seem unfeasible – but this was an age of long-distance (and often competitive) place-to-place walking, so it’s not entirely out of the question.
- The Needle, a 15-metre high stone obelisk.
- The Rose Tower (pictured), also known as Messiter's Cone, a 23-metre high cone set on a cylindrical base which is dissected by three arches. The cone has seven levels of pigeon holes.
All the follies are grade II listed and their origin is something of a mystery. They were probably built in the 1770s by then owner of the estate John Newman. But another theory has it that they were commissioned by George Messiter in the 1820s to give estate labourers work during an agricultural depression.
4. PRINCIPAL PLANNING OFFICER, TEIGNBRIDGE DISTRICT COUNCIL
Location: Teignmouth, Devon
The job: “This role involves managing a caseload of major scale, strategic planning applications alongside a team of well supported skilled professional planning officers.
“You will be supported by a dedicated planning officer and will deal with all stages of the development management process giving pre-application advice, making site visits, writing reports, making recommendations, discharging conditions, and representing the council in appeals and at committee if appropriate.
“The role will assist in the council delivering significant mixed-use developments across the district and is well suited to a driven and highly experienced planner with an eye for detail, an excellent track record and an understanding of the importance of delivery of projects of this nature.”
Fun fact: There are great feats of athleticism and there are great athletic feats. One of the very finest of the latter was Jonathan Edwards’ astonishing triple jump world record, set on 7 August 1995 in Gothenburg and which still stands today, 27 years later. Frankly, it’s so good it could easily stand for another 27 years.
Edwards, whose father was a vicar, lived in Teignmouth as a child before the family moved to Ilfracombe in North Devon. It was at West Buckland School that his athletic prowess was unearthed and he discover the triple jump.
In such a technically and physically exacting event, with so many things that must go right to produce a good jump, records don’t change very often. Indeed, the record had stood for 10 years until Edwards broke it, by a single centimetre on 20 July that year (he jumped 17.98 metres – remember that figure).
Twenty days later, at the world championships in Gothenburg, Edwards went stratospheric. With a tangible spring in his stride, he first leapt an amazing 18.16 metres, becoming the first man to break the 18-metre barrier. This was in itself a remarkable feat.
Twenty minutes later, however, he smashed the record out of the stadium. Edwards hopped, skipped and jumped and astounding 18.29 metres. It’s one of the finest athletic records on the books and a reliable one, too, at a time when many athletes doped heavily and records were suspect: Edwards was a profoundly moral man, at the time a strict Christian who had refused for years to compete on a Sunday because he felt it to be wrong (to the detriment of his career until he squared it with his conscience). He was just an incredible athlete with a physique perfectly suited to his event, jumping in perfect conditions and he got it absolutely right on the day.
By 2002, he was the simultaneous world, Olympic, European and Commonwealth champion. And though Edwards jumped over 18 metres a number of times, neither he nor anyone else has come close to threatening his astonishing record.
5. PLANNING INSPECTOR X3, WELSH GOVERNMENT
Location: Pan-Wales (based in Cathays Park, Cardiff)
The job: “Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW), formerly Planning Inspectorate Wales, manages casework relating to the development and use of land in the public interest on behalf of the Welsh Ministers.
“PEDW needs qualified professionals who are passionate about delivering sustainable development which improves the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales. PEDW is looking for new planning inspectors that will make valuable contributions to casework that directly contributes to the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government by: building a stronger, greener economy as we make maximum progress towards decarbonisation; embedding our response to the climate and nature emergency in everything we do; and, making our cities, towns and villages even better places in which to live and work.
“We would welcome applications from external candidates hoping to join us on a permanent basis. We also welcome applications from existing civil servants on a lateral loan basis and others on a secondment basis.
“Applicants for the Planning Inspector posts must be chartered members of a relevant professional body and have substantial career experience gained over a number of years in a land use planning-based profession. This could include architecture, engineering, surveying, law or other professions where the experience and responsibility is clearly land use based.”
Fun fact: The Welsh Planning Inspectorate is based in Cathays Park, Cardiff, which is regarded as the Cardiff Civic Centre, and was described by the Pevsner architectural guide to Glamorgan as "the finest civic centre in the British Isles”.
It’s easy to see why. Set in what was formerly the grounds of Cardiff Castle, the park contains an amazing array of listed buildings constructed between 1895 and the late 1930s around a central park, Alexandra Gardens.
These include the grade I listed Cardiff Crown Court and City Hall, both dating from 1906; the grade I National Museum of Wales (1927); the grade II National War Memorial (pictured) from 1928 and the grade II Temple of Peace (1938). There’s even a grade II listed early 20th-century public convenience.
It’s a magnificent collection of buildings, but wouldn’t have been possible without the philanthropy of the castle’s former owners, the Marquesses of Bute. It was the 3rd Marquess, an architectural patron of enormous wealth (he has been described as "the greatest builder of country houses in nineteenth-century Britain”), who sold the land to Cardiff city council for the development. On selling it, he insisted that it be used for civic, cultural and educational purposes.
A number of the buildings were commissioned as a result of competitions which attracted some of the leading architects of the day. All in all, it’s a magnificent endeavour that incorporates a range of architectural styles into a working, harmonious whole.
Image credits | Floor tiles, Central Lobby (cropped) by UK Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 | Everett Collection, Shutterstock | iStock | Juiced Up Media, Shutterstock | Carl DeAbreu Photography, Shutterstock
