The Friday Five 22.09.23
It's The Friday Five, our weekly round-up of five of the best jobs on Planner Jobs this week. Plus, for your amusement, a few tidbits of trivia related to the locations. This week, opportunities in Gedling, Notts; Cheltenham, Glos; St Helens, Merseyside; Bakewell, Derbyshire; and Glasgow (that’s in Scotland). Plus the usual trivia – the monument to a poets’s dog, the highest village in the UK, and the civic building with more marble than the Vatican.
1. DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES, GEDLING BOROUGH COUNCIL
Location: Arnold, Nottingham, Notts
The job: Roles: Principal planning officer/ planning officers
"Several exciting opportunities have arisen to join our planning service following a restructure of the development management team. The team is well-respected by our councillors and residents and we have a strong track record for timely and robust decision making. We’re at the forefront of policy preparation and will shortly be consulting on a residential design code to support our existing policies and deliver a step change in design quality for residential developments.
"Principal planning officer: This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced planner to deal with major and other complex planning applications. You will also deputise for the team manager, mentor staff and present applications to the planning committee.
"Planning officers: These are excellent opportunities to manage a diverse caseload of planning applications, appeals and pre-application enquiries."
Fun fact: Newstead Abbey, a former priory converted into a country house and estate, is perhaps best known as the family seat of the Byrons – including one George Gordon Baron, the 6th Baron Byron, better known as the notorious romantic poet Lord Byron.
Byron inherited the estate at the age of just 10 in 1798 and it’s said that the estate’s scale contributed to his own flamboyant tastes and sense of importance. Even so, it was more or less in a state of disrepair when he acquired it, got worse under his ownership and became something of a millstone around his neck until he was finally able to sell it in 1818.
He spent relatively little time living in the abbey itself, preferring instead to live with his mother elsewhere in Nottinghamshire, in London, or to travel overseas. He left England for good in 1816.
Nevertheless, the estate did hold some value for him at one point: in 1808 Lord Byron’s beloved Newfoundland dog Boatswain died of rabies. The dog was buried at Newstead and given an extravagant monument inscribed with lines from his master’s poem Epitaph to a Dog. It’s reported that Byron himself wanted to be buried with the dog; in the event, after his death in 1824 while fighting for greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, he was interred at the family vault in the nearby Church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall.
2. PLANNER/SENIOR PLANNER, ROBERT HITCHINS LTD
Location: Nr Cheltenham, Glos/ Hybrid
The job: "Specialising in the acquisition and delivery of consented land to housebuilders and in the investment and development of land and properties for the commercial property market, the Robert Hitchins Group is a long-established family-owned property company with an enviable reputation and track record.
"We are looking for an enthusiastic planner to join our busy and dynamic land and planning team. Responsibilities of the role include, but are not limited to:
- Preparing and submitting planning applications, appeals and pre-application enquiries
- Undertaking and assisting in the preparation of information for community engagement, committee meetings and public examinations
- Conducting research and undertaking planning appraisals to establish the development potential of sites
- Researching and commenting on planning policies and writing high quality reports with recommendations."
Fun fact: Cheltenham – home of the Gold Cup, a smorgasbord of Regency splendour, the once-fastest steam train in the world – and croquet. More precisely, it’s the home of the Croquet Association, the body that oversees the game in England, organising tournaments, arbitrating on laws, training referees and maintaining rankings.
It’s not entirely clear why the Croquet Association is based in Cheltenham, but the game was extraordinarily popular in England in the 1860s, aided by the development of until newfangled cylinder lawnmowers. Unfortunately, these also enabled the rise of lawn tennis, which eventually eclipsed croquet in popularity and many croquet clubs converted to tennis clubs. Indeed, Wimbledon is home to what is still called the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which was initially founded in 1868 as just the All England Croquet Club.
But we digress: the origin of croquet as a sport is somewhat cloudy. But it’s thought it can be traced back to at least the late Middle Ages as a game called ‘paille-maille’ (ball-mallet) which was a form of ‘ground billiards’ and gave rise to the London street name Pall Mall because it was played here by the aristocracy in the 17th century.
The game is thought to have been imported into England from France, via Scotland. Or perhaps Ireland. Like many sports and games, though, its origins are probably somewhere back in classical antiquity and there was certainly a similar game being played in Europe in the 12th century.
In any case, the game lives on and is played all over the world, with strong associations in Australia, the USA, Egypt and, of course, Cheltenham. The current world champion is an Englishman, Robert Fulford.
3. SENIOR PLANNING OFFICER – POLICY, ST HELENS BOROUGH COUNCIL
Location: St Helens, Merseyside
The job: "St. Helens Council plays a key role in the Liverpool City Region and wider area, and has an acknowledged reputation as providing excellent planning services.
"The council’s development plans team is small, friendly, and ambitious. We are dealing with an exciting range of planning challenges, balancing the need for major new development to deliver jobs, homes, and infrastructure with the protection of the borough’s green spaces and other environmental assets. In this context, we have recently adopted the St Helens Borough Local Plan (July 2022), and are now working on its implementation.
"In addition to this, we are also currently preparing new supplementary planning documents to shape development and are engaged in a project to promote neighbourhood planning in the borough.
"You will play a key role - working in partnership with others - in the above projects, amongst other relevant work areas, such as monitoring and strategic planning. You will play the lead on specific policy areas and gain experience of supervising your own projects."
Fun fact: Novelist and television writer Lynda La Plante, best known perhaps for Prime Suspect, was born in St Helens as Lynda Titchmarsh in 1943. Before becoming a full-time writer, she was an actress who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and appeared in a lot of popular 1980s TV series. She's best known, though, as hay-fever-suffering ghost Tamara Novak in the BBC children’s TV series Rentaghost.
That was in the late 1970s. But La Plante had already begun to distinguish herself as a TV scriptwriter. Her first assignment was another children’s show, The Kids From 47A. But she quickly graduated to adult thrillers, winning acclaim for the 1983 robbery series Widows, which centred on the videos of four armed robbers carrying out a heist planned by the now-dead husbands.
Her debut novel was published a few years later, again to critical and commercial success, and in 1991 came the first series of Prime Suspect, which established her as a major TV writing talent and made a huge star out of Helen Mirren as the embattled female detective chief inspector Jane Tennison. The series was praised for its tough and realistic depiction of life in a modern police force.
Since then she’s written a stream of series that have been well received in the UK and the USA, films and several dozen crime novels all in her familiar gritty, no-nonsense style. She continues to write prolifically – and DCI Tennison continues to be her most popular character.
4. AREA TEAM MANAGER, PEAK DISTRICT NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY
Location: Bakewell, Derbyshire
The job: "We are currently seeking a highly motivated and experienced area team manager to join our planning service. As the area team manager, you will be responsible for overseeing a dedicated team of staff who handle development management and monitoring and enforcement activities within the South Area of the national park.
"You will contribute significantly to shaping the future of the Peak District and ensuring sustainable development and preservation of its unique character. Specifically, you will:
- Lead and manage a team of planning professionals
- Coordinate and oversee all development management and enforcement activities in the South Area
- Collaborate closely with colleagues and stakeholders to ensure consistent application of the authority’s planning policies, practices and protocols
- Provide expert advice on planning matters to both internal and external parties
- Stay up-to-date with relevant legislation, policies, and industry trends."
Fun fact: The fantastically named Flash, in Staffordshire, sits at 1514 feet above sea level, making it the highest village in the UK – a claim supported by the BBC over another contender, Wanlockhead near Dumfries.
Flash is also famed for its early Wesleyan Methodist community, but the village wasn’t always so upstanding – it was notorious for illegal activities such as cockfighting and counterfeiting. The counterfeited money would be exchanged at the nearby Three Shire Heads (where the boundaries of Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire meet) – as one county’s authorities closed in on the counterfeiters, they would simply hop over into the next county.
5. PLANNER, ENVIRONMENTAL AND PLANNING CONSULTANCY, GLASGOW
Location: Glasgow
The job: "Our client, an independent environmental and planning consultancy, is looking for an experienced planner to join its team in Glasgow. The company currently delivers a wide variety of planning solutions for its clients in the renewables, telecoms and environmental sectors.
"The successful candidate will have:
- Previous planning experience
- Chartered status with the RTPI or will be working towards this
- Demonstrable project management experience
- An in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects of EIA disciplines
- A proven ability to write professional reports."
Fun fact: You could be forgiven for not assuming any immediate parallels between the city of Glasgow and Vatican City, but that would be to ignore the fact that the incredibly lavish Glasgow City Chambers building has more marble in it. Built in 1889, the building was designed in a form of renaissance classicism that demanded the use of marble for its Italianate styles and ornate decoration.
The building’s style and fairly easy accessibility has made it a draw for various filmmakers. As well as standing in for the Vatican itself, it’s been used as the British embassy in Moscow (An Englishman Abroad, 1983) as as the backdrop to scenes for the TV series Outlander.
Image credits | iStock and Shutterstock
