The Friday Five 29.07.22
It’s the Friday Five. You know the drill - five town planning jobs selected from this week’s stash of vacancies on Planner Jobs; five ‘fun facts’ to accompany said jobs. We can’t promise the facts are actually ‘fun’, or even ‘facts’ for that matter. But we hope you feel entertained. Here we go:
1. GROUP LEADER – DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT, CHARNWOOD BOROUGH COUNCIL
Location: Charnwood, Leicestershire
The job: “We are seeking to appoint a dynamic, motivated and organised planning professional who is keen to make a significant contribution in leading the performance and achievements of our development management function and in supporting the delivery of the council’s corporate plan. We will offer you plentiful and varied experience in a key role within our development management service and an opportunity to develop your management skills, contribute to the management of the organisation and the preparation of the emerging local plan and ultimately its implementation.
“Charnwood is a vibrant borough with a mix of market towns as well as attractive conservation villages. Located between the three cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, the borough’s main town and administrative centre is Loughborough. Charnwood’s busy development management team processes in excess of 2,500 planning applications each year of all types, with a vision to improve the economy, quality of life and environment as set out in our adopted development plan.”
Fun fact: Loughborough (in Charnwood) can lay claim to a ‘forgotten’ poet who wrote a collection of memorable landscape poems evoking the places he remembered from his childhood. Taking inspiration from a series of walks through Charnwood Forest, Charnwood Poems sees Albert Francis Cross revisiting the landscapes and haunts of his youth and nostalgically recalling a childhood in Victorian Loughborough and Charnwood.
Cross was quite a remarkable man. Born in Loughborough in 1863, he began his working life as a teacher. But he morphed into a poet, playwright and journalist, first contributing to the Leicester Advertiser before becoming editor of the Nuneaton Observer. Later on, he bought the Nuneaton Chronicle and remained its owner and editor until his death in 1940.
But Cross also formed the Nuneaton Theatre and Entertainment Company in 1900 and managed of the Prince of Wales Theatre, Nuneaton. He built the Empire Skating Rink in Nuneaton and managed Rugby Theatre in Rugby. Alongside this he wrote plays (including the musical comedy Dainty Diana) and several collections of poetry, including, in 1928, Charnwood Poems.
2. PLANNING OFFICER (DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT TEAM), CALDERDALE COUNCIL
Location: Calderdale, West Yorkshire/home
The job: “Calderdale Council has opportunities for suitably qualified planners to join our dynamic planning services team. We are interested in hearing from planners who are enthusiastic about the opportunity to work flexibly across development management, planning enforcement and planning policy.
“The ideal candidates will be able to work under pressure towards tight deadlines and be able to apply expertise required to carry out the tasks of the role. You will be a critical thinker with excellent communication skills. The successful candidate will be required to carry out site visits in urban and rural areas across the borough.
“Calderdale is a great place to work and live, with a mix of vibrant, historic towns alongside attractive countryside. Our investment in transport, public realm and new facilities will generate inclusive growth, creating a socially and economically vibrant Calderdale.
“With a new local plan in preparation and a regeneration agenda supported by an unprecedented level of investment, Calderdale offers an environment within which to develop and advance your planning career.”
Fun fact: Brighouse in Calderdale is home to the world-famous Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, which had a no.2 hit single in 1977 with The Floral Dance. This was only kept from the no.1 spot by Paul McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre – the third best-selling UK single of all time.
Founded in 1881 through public donations given by the townsfolk of the adjacent villages of Brighouse and Rastrick that face each other across the River Calder, the band was originally called the Brighouse and Rastrick Temperance Brass Band. According to Wikipedia, the band is “regarded by many as the best and most consistent ‘public subscription band’ in the world” and has built a formidable reputation for its entertaining live performances (which include touring with the folk group The Unthanks in 2011).
In 1968, the band won the inaugural Brass Band World Championship, and in 1993 became the first Yorkshire team to win the All England Masters Brass Band Championship, a feat repeated in 1998. The band won the National Brass Band Championship Finals in 1946, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1997, 1998, 2010, 2011 and 2017, and the European Championships in 1981 and 1998. In other words, they’re pretty damn good.
3. SENIOR PLANNER, PEAK DISTRICT NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY
Location: Bakewell, Derbyshire
The job: “We’re currently looking for a full-time senior planner to join our planning service in Bakewell on a permanent basis. It is an exciting time to join the National Park as we are currently reviewing our planning service to create an efficient and positive future with a structure that encourages development and provides an opportunity for us to grow our leaders of the future.
“As a senior planner, you will support our planning service in guiding and managing planning and developments within the national park. Reporting to the area team manager, you will process planning applications and associated development management matters. You will negotiate with applicants on planning applications and prepare reports and recommendations for the planning committee. You will also provide advice to junior staff, applicants and members of the public on planning matters, prepare case documentation on planning appeals, including formal hearings and public inquiries and advise the authority’s policy team on the monitoring and development of planning policies.
“The Peak District National Park Authority protects, enhances and shares the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the Peak District. We also support the economic and social wellbeing of the communities in which we work.”
Fun fact: The Peak District National Park hosts the starting point at the southern end of the Pennine Way, Britain’s oldest long-distance national walking trail.
Completed in 1965, the trail begins at the Nag’s Head pub in Edale and unwinds across 435 kilometres of often tough, craggy and remote terrain until it reaches its end at the Border Hotel, in Kirk Yetholm, Scotland.
In between these two points, walkers will track the rocky spine of England - hiking through the hills of the Derbyshire Peak District, the Swaledale Valley, across the North Pennines and over Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.
Though not the longest walk in England, it’s generally regarded as the most challenging. The total ascent exceeds the height of Everest and paths may be narrow and uneven, wet and boggy. The trail is also considered to have been pioneering in opening up some of England’s wildest spaces and setting the precedent for other trails to follow.
4. SENIOR STRATEGIC PLANNING OFFICER, PETERBOROUGH COUNCIL
Location: Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
The job: “We are seeking a senior planner to join our busy and friendly planning policy team to help with the preparation of key council policy documents. We are looking for an experienced and capable planning professional who can exercise initiative and work independently to help deliver our diverse and exciting policy service.
“To complement the existing skills set in the team, we are particularly seeking applications from candidates who can demonstrate relevant experience in either supporting local communities in the production of neighbourhood plans or practical experience in implementing a site selection and assessment process for site allocations as part of delivering a local plan.
“It is an exciting time to work at Peterborough City Council. With a new chief executive and a new executive director, we are taking a fresh look at what we do, and how we do it. We are gearing up to start work on a brand new local plan, and there has never been a better time to join us, as you will have the opportunity to shape the future from the very start of the process.”
Fun fact: Peterborough was home to the extraordinary Walter Cornelius, a self-styled strongman whose feats and stunts included an annual attempt to fly across the River Nene using home-made wings.
Born in 1924 behind the Iron Curtain, Cornelius fled from Russian occupation of his homeland in the 1940s. Accounts have him either swimming across the Baltic Sea (unlikely) or rowing more than 400 miles across it with a Russian bullet wound in his stomach.
In any case, he ended up in Peterborough where he worked as a lifeguard at the lido and made his name performing bizarre stunts in the town. These included feats of strength and stamina, but also novelties such as pushing a pea around the town using his nose. Cornelius was also known for challenging people to smash a concrete slab balanced on his head using a sledgehammer – he even appeared on Blue Peter in 1968 to demonstrate the feat.
He’s most famous, however, for ‘Daredevil Birdman’, his annual attempt to fly across the Nene with home-made wings. Large crowds would turn out each year to cheer him on and see him - inevitably - fail. He died in 1983 but has not been forgotten: in 2016, Peterborough Lido erected a silhouette of Cornelius as a weathercock on the swimming pool's weathervane.
5. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN PLANNING AND HOUSING, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Location: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
The job: “The Department of Land Economy welcomes applications for an assistant professor in planning and housing.
“The Department of Land Economy is a leader in its field. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework assessment, 67 per cent of the department's research was found to be "world leading" and a further 31 per cent "internationally excellent", making it the top department in the field in the UK in Times Higher Education's ranking.
“The assistant professor in planning and housing will be expected to undertake research in the fields of planning and housing of a quality that accords with the department's standards; to identify sources of funding for such research and to build on and expand our network of contacts working in those areas; to teach on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in areas related to their expertise; and to make a general contribution to the running and management of the department.”
Fun fact: Cambridge’s Grantchester Meadows was memorialised in music on local band Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album in 1969. The album, generally considered a failed experiment and frequently dismissed by the band itself, was recorded at the height of 1960s psychedelia and included tracks with titles such as Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.
Grantchester Meadows was written by Roger Waters and is a pastoral acoustic track recalling Waters’ childhood in the Cambridge suburbs (so, something of a companion piece to Charnwood Poems, above?).
The album’s odd title apparently comes from a local slang term for sex coined by one of the band’s roadies. More interestingly, it is now the official name of a damselfly within the genus Umma. In 2015, scientists discovered a new member of the genus and named it Umma gumma, after the Pink Floyd album.
The Umma gumma damselfly cannot be found in Grantchester Meadows, sadly, but only in parts of Africa.
Image credits | Nicola Pulham, Shutterstock; Furtseff, Shutterstock; iStock; Clare Louise Jackson, Shutterstock; Markos Loizou, Shutterstock
