The Friday Five 09.02.24
It's The Friday Five, our weekly round-up (dare we say curation?) of the best town planning jobs advertised on Planner Jobs this week. Oh, and some place-based facts to amuse and entertain while you browse. This week, opportunities in Glasgow, North Devon, Braintree, Bodicote (it’s in Oxfordshire) and West Bridgford. Plus captivating tales involving Wild West heroes, 18th-century satirists, 20th-century satirists, woollen cloth and posh estates. Read on...
1. RENEWABLE ENERGY DEVELOPER, EUROPEAN ENERGY
Location: Glasgow/Remote
The job: "European Energy is a green energy company experiencing exponential growth. We develop, construct, and operate wind and solar PV projects globally and are at the forefront of the emerging green hydrogen/Power-to-X sectors.
"Rapid growth has created an opportunity to join European Energy UK Limited´s business as renewable energy developer reporting directly to the company’s development director. The renewable energy developer is responsible for developing onshore renewable energy projects in the UK market to the ready-to-build stage.
"As renewable energy developer, you'll be responsible for the development of utility-scale renewable energy generation and storage projects from their formative stages to the point of being construction-ready. The ideal candidate will have a track record in UK-based renewable energy project development and be able to manage stakeholders, driving forward all development activity and successfully navigating the consenting phase.
"For projects where consent has already been achieved, your role will encompass planning condition discharge, identifying project risks and supporting our in-house engineering and construction teams during the pre-construction and construction phases to ensure that projects are delivered according to planning consent."
Fun fact: Does this qualify as the most surreal culture clash yet featured in The Friday Five? In 1891, Buffalo Bill Cody – the cowboy who toured the world with a Wild West show – joined the crowd at a Glasgow Rangers football match while dressed in full cowboy regalia. It wasn’t a good day for Rangers, who lost 3-0 to Queen's Park.
There’s so much to unpack here, we hardly know where to begin. So let’s start with Cody. ‘Buffalo Bill’ built a reputation as a showman in mid-19th century USA – the time of the ‘Wild West’ depicted in more movies and TV shows than you can shake a rattlesnake at.
Cody started young, and spent much of his youth and early adulthood as a messenger rider, often riding hundreds of miles through dangerous territory to deliver messages. He also served as a soldier and a scout, but his nickname came from his legendary work as a hunter of bison to provide meat for railroad workers on the Kansas Pacific railroad in the 1860s. He’s reputed to have killed 4,282 in just 18 months.
Reputation growing, young Bill, still barely into his 20s, began to perform with the popular ‘Wild West Shows’ springing up around the country. By the 1880s he was touring his own Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to rave reviews and clamouring audiences in towns and cities around the world, who couldn’t get enough of cowboys, Indians, trick shooting and daring horsemanship.
And so it was that Buffalo Bill Cody found himself at Ibrox Park in Glasgow in November 1891, while performing a four-month residency at the city’s East End Exhibition Buildings in Dennistoun. It’s said that he was “enthusiastically received” by fans at the match, and the local paper even commemorated the occasion with a poem (which we won’t repeat here, although it does contain the line “I guess thar’s sumthing in this game”).
Meanwhile, the performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show made quite an impression on Glaswegians, who became used to the sight of cowboys (and cowgirls) and Native Americans walking city streets in their traditional dress. The event has lived long in the city’s memory – in 2006 a statue of Buffalo Bill was unveiled in Whitehall Street in Dennison, close to where the performances took place.
2. LEAD OFFICER (DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT), NORTH DEVON COUNCIL
Location: Barnstaple, Devon
The job: "We're looking for a lead planning officer to join our friendly and welcoming team.
"You'll play a vital role in shaping how we meet our growth objectives, ensuring that development is of the highest quality and is both sustainable and environmentally progressive, whilst looking after the exceptional and stunning environment of North Devon - its coastline, harbours, moors and historic urban and rural settlements centred on the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of Braunton Burrows.
"The role will provide rewarding opportunities to build experience and further your career. If you're a forward-thinking, positive and customer focused planner who can enable appropriate development in a high class environment we would like to hear from you."
Fun fact:
Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it.
So concludes the epitaph on the tomb of John Gay in Westminster Abbey – his own words, as it happens. For a small town, Barnstaple has produced a remarkable number of famous folk, John Gay among them. Who? Ah, even if you don’t know his name, you may well have heard of his most famous work, The Beggar’s Opera, an 18th-century satirical ballad opera (one that used popular tunes) lampooning the governing class of the day.
The work was remarkably popular and has continued to be subject to regular revivals in theatres round the world. Ballad operas were the popular musicals of the day, the 18th-century equivalent to the shows regularly performed in the West End now. The Beggar’s Opera is the sole surviving example of this once-thriving genre.
The work took aim at the pretensions of Italian opera, in part by mixing up operatic arias with popular ballads, folk tunes, and church hymns, all of which would have been known to ordinary folk. The characters, too, were the reverse of the aristocratic and high-born characters of the Italian opera; The Beggar’s Opera takes place among thieves and whores and the constables and jailers who pursue them. And its theme is: A broadside against poverty, injustice and corruption at all levels of society.
It made Gay famous and rich; quite the ascent for a boy born into a respectable though not especially wealthy family in a small town in Devon in the late 17th century. The family was comfortable enough, however, to send him to London to become an apprentice to a silk mercer (a haberdasher, basically) in London. This gave him two things: knowledge that he was not cut out for ordinary work, and a view of the world beyond his small town.
Somehow he became a writer – a dramatist and a poet, whose satirical plays attracted the attention of the great writers of the day, and the censors. His entry to higher society led to employment as a British ambassador overseas, attracted various wealthy patrons (including the royal family) and lodgings at the Palace of Whitehall. This in spite of the fact that he frequently satirised the class of people who fed and housed him.
Gay’s fame and aristocratic connections were such that when he died in 1732 he was given a place in Westminster Abbey, a rare accolade reserved for the most highly regarded writers and poets. Not bad for the son of a bourgeois family in a mid-sized market town in south-west England.
3. HEAD OF PLANNING, BRAINTREE DISTRICT COUNCIL
Location: Braintree, Essex
The job: "If you want to be excited about the next step in your career, then look no further than Braintree District Council: we’ve got plenty going on.
"A mix of complex (and some contentious) proposals, a number of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, and the development of a new local plan in an organisation where there is political support for good growth, all make this one of the most exciting strategic planning roles in the South East. And there is a fantastic platform to build on. Our planning function has earned a reputation for excellence. It’s a busy and efficient service that is closely aligned to our strategic ambitions for place and is well-placed to adapt to anticipated changes in national planning policy.
"This is an opportunity that will suit a qualified and experienced planning professional who can build trust with key stakeholders through assured professional advice and highly developed relationship management skills."
Fun fact: As far back as the 14th century, towards the back end of the Middle Ages, the town of Braintree in Essex was involved in the processing and manufacturing of woollen cloth, with local bailiffs in 1452 noting how “the art of mystery of weaving woollen cloth” was being exercised at the town.
Mystery indeed, because explanations as to how and why Braintree became so woolly are a bit… woolly. Maybe it was a case of keeping up with the Colchesters, with that town being itself a cloth-weaving hotbed back then.
In any case, it’s commonly held that following nigh on 300 years of cloth-making Braintree’s reputation in this field was turbocharged in the 17th century when some Flemish immigrants turned up, realised that the locals could do with some schooling on the latest methods and styles, and set about turning Braintree from ‘known for cloth’ to ‘obsessed with cloth’. Materials produced in the town garnering solid reputations as far south as Spain and Portugal.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution, Braintree was home to several silk mills. Alas, all that revolution gradually meant that Braintree became less about its cloth and more about – for example – hosting the UK's first electric vehicle service station, which opened a couple of years ago.
4. PLANNING POLICY TEAM LEADER, CHERWELL DISTRICT COUNCIL
Location: Bodicote, North Oxfordshire/Agile
The job: "Cherwell District Council needs a new planning policy team leader to push forward our local plan review and other planning policy work.
"The local plan is one of the council’s most important strategies and is a highly visible area of the work. Working with our planning policy, conservation & design manager, you'll lead a team of officers to deliver the plan, engaging with other services, elected members, communities, developers and neighbouring authorities. To support plan preparation, consultation has been undertaken on Issues and Options Papers (2020 and 2021) and a draft plan (Reg.18 – 2023).
"You'll need the skills, drive and commitment to lead and deal with a complex and varied planning policy workload. You'll need to be a good planner. You should also be proactive, delivery focused, innovative and highly adept in group working and problem solving. The ability to stay focused whilst being aware of wider challenges is essential. You should be good with people and strong at team working."
Fun fact: Banbury in Cherwell was once home to the novelist Anthony Burgess. Best known for A Clockwork Orange, Burgess taught at the now-defunct Banbury Grammar School; it’s unclear whether his dystopian work about violent delinquents was in any way shaped by this experience.
The school did absolutely feature in another of Burgess’s works, however: The Worm and The Ring, an interpretation of the German composer Wagner’s Ring Cycle. In fact, Burgess drew so much inspiration for this work from his time at the school that its secretary, Gwendoline Bustin, took libel action, leading to all copies of the original 1962 work being pulped. A revised, less-libellous version of the novel was published in 1970.
Although A Clockwork Orange is considered a modern classic, Banbury also has connections to a far humbler literary offering. The town was once a hub for ‘chap books’, a type of inexpensive small, paper-covered booklet, usually made from a single sheet of paper folded into multiple pages.
Chap books often contained children’s nursery rhymes, and according to a BBC factfile on Oxfordshire, a Banbury chap book popularised the saying ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight…’
5. PRINCIPAL PLANNING OFFICER, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
Location: West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire/Hybrid
The job: "We're looking for an experienced planner capable of managing a large and varied caseload of planning applications, which the council has the responsibility to determine. These could be minerals or waste developments, the council’s own development such as schools and roads, EIA development and also involvement in an increasing number of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects for which the council is a host authority. You'll have the opportunity to present your applications to planning committee and represent the council at any appeals related to your caseload.
"You must possess the organisational skills and personal drive which allow you to progress proposals on your own initiative, proactively solve problems utilising your strong interpersonal skills and make decisions to meet service delivery targets, all whilst working with tact and diplomacy in representing the council on politically sensitive issues. You'll also be committed to excellent customer care and have an understanding and commitment to the council’s equal opportunities policy.
"Nottinghamshire is a great place to live, work and visit with a vibrant city centre, a number of historic market towns and wide expanses of countryside reflecting the county’s rich history and geology from the Trent Valley to Sherwood Forest, to the English Civil War and the county’s rich mining history immortalised through the works of D H Lawrence."
Fun fact: Situated just to the south of Nottingham city centre, on the other bank of the River Trent, West Bridgford is perhaps best known as the home of both Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club (Trent Bridge Cricket Ground) and Nottingham Forest Football Club (The City Ground). Although the cricket ground can be traced back to the 1840s and the football ground to the 1890s, the West Bridgford area boasts a much longer history – and one of particular interest to town planners.
A settlement was first established here by the early 10th-century King of the Anglo Saxons, Edward the Elder. The settlement was a defensive one, containing fortifications designed to protect the burgeoning town of Nottingham (or Snotingeham as it was called in the Domesday Book) from incursions by invading Vikings.
Over time the land south of the Trent fell into the hands of the Muster family who, post-First World War, sold much of it for development. And this is where the planning interest comes in: the family stipulated strict planning regulations, which restricted housing density, size and number of bedrooms, mandated tree-lined roads and envisaged a grid-based system of streets.
Overall, the new settlement was intended to create a smart, affluent neighbourhood for Nottingham’s more prosperous and aspirational families (it even included side streets with smaller homes for domestic servants). The new development met a certain amount of scorn among the population of the city, however, who mockingly dubbed it ‘Bread and Lard Island’ – implying that West Bridgford’s new denizens had spent so much of their money on a house in West Bridgford so that they could be seen to be inhabitants of an exclusive enclave that they were now reduced to living on bread and lard.
Image credits | Donna Beeler, Shutterstock; Everett Collection, Shutterstock; Andrei, Armiagov, Shutterstock; WelcomeInside, Shutterstock; Graphic Resources, Shutterstock
