Tag: training

#SYPC2017

I have titled this post with a hashtag, as we were asked to promo the event on social media.

Emma’s blog post #4: #SYPC2017

SYPC stands for Scottish Young Planners Conference. The conference consisted of morning lectures with Q&A sessions, and afternoon workshops (and then drinks after). The whole day was geared around giving young planners the skills they need to be successful.

The first talk was given by Kevin Stewart MSP, titled “People, Places and Planning: skills and the planning review”. The Q&A for this was particularly good, as it gave us the chance to question the Minister on the planning review, and future prospects for planning in Scotland.

There’s a picture of the Minister that I took and put on the planning Edinburgh insta which you should all be following.

By the way, the most used buzzword was “collaboration” (we guess. We didn’t keep a tally or anything). Coincidentally, “collaboration” is the very word Bob Reid (former convenor of RTPI Scotland) said we should replace with “mobilisation”. Bob’s talk was all about “collaborating: working together to deliver development”, and he says there’s no point in talking about things if you’re not getting anything done; collaboration v mobilisation.

Nicola Barclay, CEO of Homes for Scotland gave a talk on “leading”. She spoke about her journey to the role she’s in now, and what helped shape her into the leader she is today. She recommended we all do a quiz (something like this) to see what positive traits we have that we might not recognise on our own. Very inspirational stuff, loved it.

I attended 2 of the afternoon workshops;

“Making development work: the economics of development”, given by Catherine Wood (Gladman) and Ian Drummond (Taylor Wimpey).

Despite this being largely maths based, the process of valuing land was explained to us in a way we (most of us, anyway) could understand…. That toss up between giving better designed places or maximising profit. Toughy.

Also “make yourself an asset: effective networking and business development”, from Sandra Lindsay (Springfield Properties) and Michael Halliday (Halliday Fraser Munro).

This, I could totally get on board with. We learnt how to do an “elevator pitch”, which was effectively me selling myself to a stranger in 1 minute without coming across as a weirdo… I’ll have to keep you posted on how I manage with that…

To conclude: the information provided was very good, we all learned a lot throughout the day, and I didn’t lose a bet about “vision” being the most used buzzword.

Emma

Ps. It took a solid 24 minutes for Donald Trump to be mentioned, and he was subsequently mentioned maybe 3 further times;

“Do not leave the wrong impression” – we were learning about how to effectively network, here

 

Community Council Training on Planning in Edinburgh

On Saturday 7 June we held community council training at the City Chambers.  This gave community councils an opportunity to hear more about the work we do and how they can get more involved in planning in Edinburgh.  We held a similar event on 27 May.

The event was well attended with 53 participants from 23 community councils.  Following the welcome by Councillor Ian Perry (Convener of the Planning Committee) and an introduction by David Leslie (Acting Head of Planning and Building Standards) there were presentations about the Local Development Plan, major planning applications, how planning decisions are made and how we deal with enforcement issues.  All the talks had a question and answer session and the community councils had a number of detailed questions which gave us the chance to explain things in more detail.

Workshop groups discussed how to get involved in the Local Development Plan process, commenting on planning applications and our use of enforcement powers.  The groups had a healthy debate with various issues raised.

The comments we received will help inform how we communicate with community councils and how they can influence planning in their area.  Feedback from the event has been positive and we intend to hold future events with ward members later in the year looking at other aspects of planning in Edinburgh.  The advice notes, presentations and additional guidance covered at the event are all available on the Council’s website.