The Friday Five 09.08.24
It's the Friday Five, our weekly round-up of five of the best town planning jobs currently advertised on Planner Jobs. Plus some place-based nuggets of information to amuse and entertain. this week, opportunities in Kensington and Chelsea, Oxford, Essex, Hinckley and Bosworth and Wrexham. Plus the origin of Chelsea boots, England's oldest coffee house, how a town with a City became a city with a City, the defamation of Richard III and one of the 'Seven Wonders of Wales'.
1. PRINCIPAL PLANNING OFFICER, ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA
Location: Kensington, London/Hybrid
The job: "This is a unique and exciting opportunity to be an important part of the newly created fast-track team, deputising for the fast-track team leader and helping grow the service, which aims to be the largest and most successful fast-track service in the country.
"As a principal planning officer, you will also be responsible for major planning applications and the more complex minor applications, both at pre-application and application stage. Whilst it may be the smallest of the London boroughs, its unique built environment, the variety of land uses, and its diverse population mean your case load will be an exciting mix of applications.
"You will deputise for the development management team leader in managing the team which will include reviewing recommendations, allocating work and mentoring junior officers, helping to grow and develop the team. You will also manage planning performance agreements and prepare appeal statements and appear at public inquiries and hearings.
"Kensington and Chelsea is a unique place, home to places of great cultural importance and diverse communities. We have unmatched built heritage sitting alongside iconic retail centres, a vibrant specialist employment market, an international medical quarter and world class cultural attractions. We also have many challenges facing us: we’re not only home to the wealthy but also to some of the most deprived wards in London. We’re committed to delivering good growth in the borough, with homes for all, and have started our own ambitious house building programme."
Fun fact: Chelsea - known for buns, pensioners, china... and boots! Though the Chelsea boot became a symbol of 1950s and ’60s style, and an absolute staple among Mods and the Swinging Sixties set, its origins actually predate Queen Victoria.
First, though, a description: a Chelsea boot is a close-fitting, ankle boot with an elastic side panel, for ease of getting on and off. Some variants have a zip, and there's a related Beatle boot with a sharper toe and a Cuban heel. But a true Chelsea boot? Elasticated.
Its origins are a teeny bit murky. It’s said they were influenced by the riding boots worn by cavalry soldiers in the British Raj and that a London cobbler named Thomas Cotton was using the term Chelsea boot by 1831. But It’s generally acknowledged that the Chelsea boot as we know and love it was created by Joseph Sparkes-Hall at the request of the young Queen Victoria who wanted a practical boot for walking and riding.
The ‘J. Sparkes-Hall Patent Elastic Ankle Boot’ was designed to be easy to get on and off, utilising the recently invented material of vulcanised rubber for this purpose. Of Queen Victoria, Hall claimed: “She (Queen Victoria) walks in them daily and thus gives the strongest proof of the value she attaches to the invention.”
Renamed the Chelsea boot, the style was popular throughout the Victorian period and worn by both men and women of all classes. By the onset of World War I, however, the boot fell out of fashion. That is, until the style was rediscovered by trendy young things in post-war London. By the early ’60s, they were being worn by Mods and bands such as the Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and The Small Faces. The Beatles even commissioned their own variation.
It’s an item of footwear that has become indelibly associated with a particular time and place. Swinging London was a cultural revolution that saw the capital transformed from a grimy post-war city into a vibrant, creative metropolis. It was particularly centred on West London and King’s Road in Chelsea, so it seems almost inevitable that the Chelsea boot should become one of its style symbols.
They're still worn today and remain popular among musicians, usually those who are harking back to the Mod style. Chelsea boots, it seems will never quite go out of fashion.
2. PRINCIPAL PLANNER, (MAJOR PROJECTS) OXFORD CITY COUNCIL
Location: Oxford/Hybrid
The job: "We're looking for a principal planner to join our major projects team within development management. This is your opportunity to be part of the team that will help deliver Oxford’s future growth and development.
"The ability to negotiate effectively whilst delivering excellent customer service is essential and you must be pragmatic with a can-do and solution focused attitude to support our ambitions.
"Oxford is a world class city with an international reputation, and the development management team has been involved in projects that have transformed Oxford in recent years, including the £440m Westgate Shopping Centre, 885 home urban extension at Barton, and the mixed use employment led development at Oxford North. The team are also involved in projects for prestigious employers in the historic core of Oxford; where the demand to provide new development in the context of one of the world’s finest cities presents a unique and exciting challenge.
"If you want to be part of this and help contribute to an exemplary planning service in then we’d like to meet you."
Fun fact: A number of places claim to have been the first coffee house in England, but Oxford's Grand Café has a very strong claim. Based at no.84 The High, it first became a coffee house in 1650, opened by a Jewish entrepreneur named Jacob. Hitherto, it had been an inn called the Tabord (1390s) and then a coaching inn named The Angel. The Angel continued and the coffee house appears to have been connected to this.
Coffee in 1650 was at the heart of a cultural revolution. Let's be frank – it was revolution that was enabled by colonisation and slavery, and the exploitation of other nations for the raw materials – including coffee. The drink became a near fixation in 17th-century Europe. Coffee houses opened up everywhere and replaced pubs as places where merchants, politicians and intellectuals would mix and share news, ideas and business dealings.
It's possibly not an exaggeration to say that coffee houses made a substantial contribution to the spread of the Enlightment. So threatening was this circulation of ideas that King Charles II threatened to ban coffee houses in 1675 on the grounds that they spread sedition and subversion.
As for the Grand Café, the site remained The Angel until 1866, whereupon it became a grocer’s, then an ironmonger’s, then a Co-op general store and café, a Post Office, a shop selling teddy bears and finally, in 1997, a coffee house once again when the Grand Café was established.
3. INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING LEAD – RECYCLING AND WASTE, ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL (18 MONTH FIXED TERM/SECONDMENT)
Location: Chelmsford/Remote
The job: "This is a challenging and exciting role with responsibility for leading and developing an approach and process based on evidence, and a waste policy position for obtaining developer contributions for capital investment in community waste infrastructure to facilitate sustainable growth.
"You'll use best practice and evidence to develop a new planning policy position and supplementary guidance that will inform the future design of housing developments in Essex. You'll secure S106 infrastructure funding and inform district councils partners of where new waste sites are needed, in line with the waste strategy for Essex.
"You'll be responsible for securing developer contributions through robust application of policy and strong commercial negotiation to ensure waste infrastructure can be developed to align with housing growth. You will also take the lead on planning policy and development management matters for the waste service, to secure a pipeline of developer contributions, identify opportunities to maximise the value of contributions and ensure that the delivery of capital projects is in line with the agreements.
"As infrastructure planning lead, you'll be crucial to implementing projects with a proven ability to assimilate, interpret and convey technical and sector information through persuasive communications and development of business case content for community infrastructure levy and other sources of developer contributions."
Fun fact: Looked at from 2024, the decision to award Chelmsford the status of a city in 2012 (as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations) seems absurdly recent for a place with such history.
Chelmsford is home to an Anglo-Saxon burial site; it’s had a Royal Charter to hold a market since 1199; it was involved in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and it is commonly held to be the ‘birthplace of radio’. Not bad for a mere town. No wonder there was such a clamour for the upgrade.
Interestingly, many locals have clearly accepted Chelmsford as a city for quite a while now. Why so? Because, as your correspondent can attest, Chelmsford City FC has existed with that name since before the Second World War.
Ignoring sketchy old city-status nonsense such as having a cathedral or a population above 300,000, Chelmsford’s footballing fraternity decided to rename the club ‘Chelmsford City’ all the way back in 1938 – a full 74 years before the Queen finally got around to it.
There appears to have been no backlash to this decision, or indeed any confusion whatsoever. The club’s claret-and-white clad players have simply got on with turning out for City, each season adding to the illusion of Chelmsford already having attained city status.
Perhaps for any other aggrieved towns seeking city status, that’s how to go about it: set up a football club, call it [Insert Town Name] City FC, then simply sit back and wait a generation or two. Go on then, what are you waiting for? Chop chop.
4.CAREER GRADE PLANNER (PLANNING ENFORCEMENT), HINCKLEY AND BOSWORTH BOROUGH COUNCIL
Location: Hinckley, Leicestershire/Hybrid
The job: "This career graded post is an excellent opportunity for an experienced enforcement officer or someone who is just starting out in their planning career. Either way, we want to support and develop your skills to perform and progress as a professional officer.
"Working as an enforcement officer, you'll be responsible for handling planning enforcement cases and dealing with retrospective planning applications, prosecutions and appeals.
"You'll be an excellent communicator, comfortable with handling conflict and negotiating solutions to challenging problems. We'll also give you the opportunity to broaden your skills and gain valuable experience to support your career development."
Fun fact: Putting the ‘Bosworth’ in Hinckley and Bosworth is of course the town of Market Bosworth, indelibly linked in most schoolchildren's minds as the location of the Battle of Bosworth, the climactic event of the War of the Roses, and Shakespeare’s Richard III; the battle marked the end of the medieval period in Britain, and the beginning of the Tudor epoch.
Richard III died in the battle, which proved disastrous for his reputation; Shakespeare’s play depicts him as a scheming, ruthless villain, and a spectacularly bad uncle – a legacy which has only been challenged recently.
Richard III’s remains were discovered in 2012, beneath a car park in Leicester. There was a film made about this discovery. Perhaps Shakespeare was fortunate that Elizabethan England didn’t have today’s stringent defamation laws; a High Court judge ruled that the depiction of one of the real life characters in the film, Richard Taylor, the deputy registrar from the University of Leicester, was defamatory.
Taylor argued that the film had portrayed him as “patronising and misogynistic”, and Mr Justice Lewis agreed, saying: “The character Mr Taylor was portrayed throughout the film in a negative light. At no point was he shown in a way that could be described as positive, or even neutral. Whilst an individual scene may not in itself cross the threshold of seriousness, taken together the film makes a powerful comment about the claimant and the way he conducted himself when undertaking a senior professional role for a university.”
5. PRINCIPAL PLANNING OFFICER, WREXHAM COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL
Location: Wrexham/Hybrid
The job: "As principal planing officer within our development management team, you'll have line manager responsibilities for the development management and enforcement team members, including caseload allocation and sign off of delegated decisions. You'll also have a small caseload of planning applications, typically of major/strategically significant developments.
"To be considered for the role, you must have a recognised qualification in planning, a related subject or equivalent experience as well as hold a valid driving license. Membership of the RTPI and previous management experience would be desirable. You will be expected to demonstrate your judgment and initiative; have excellent written and verbal communication skills and a desire to deliver high quality planning outcomes."
Fun fact: Considered to be one of the 'Seven Wonders of Wales', St Giles in Wrexham is a grade I listed medieval masterpiece. Among its attractions are a flamboyant ceiling of flying musical angels, two early brass eagle lecterns, a window by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and the Royal Welch Fusiliers chapel. Its graveyard contains the burial place of Elihu Yale, after whom Yale University in the USA is named.
The main part of the church was built in the late 1400s and early 1500s. But it's thought that a church has existed on the site for at least 800 years. It was likely financed by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII. Its richly decorated 40-metre-high tower is absolutely covered with statues and carvings and is considered to have been an inspiration for the Victoria Tower at the Palace of Westminster in London.
It's survived the English (!) Civil War, during which the parliamentary army destroyed parts of the interior, has been painted by JMW Turner and is the centre of various local myths and legends, as you might expect. Even today, centuries after its construction, the church continues to throw up surprises: in 2015, a rare first edition King James Bible from 1611 was discovered in the church after centuries of storage.
Image credits | StepPro, iStock; ReoromART, Shutterstock; Chelmsford City FC; Duncan1890, iStock; Smartin69, iStock
