Waterman Aspen welcomes Curtis McVeigh as Principal Planning Officer

We’re pleased to welcome Curtis McVeigh to our Town Planning team as Principal Planning Officer. He brings over five years’ experience supporting local authorities with planning applications and helping teams manage increasing workloads.

Experience across local authority planning

Based in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland, Curtis began his planning career after studying at Queen’s University Belfast, where he completed a Master’s degree in Planning, including a year studying at Stockholm University.

In the last few years, he worked with several local planning authorities, progressing from assessing householder applications to working on major residential developments and complex infrastructure projects.

One particularly interesting project involved a 95km pipeline crossing five local authority areas, where he was responsible for handling the planning application on behalf of one of the councils.

Supporting our Town Planning team

Since joining Waterman Aspen, Curtis has already supported Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs) for major residential schemes.

He believes one of the biggest challenges facing local authorities is recruiting and retaining experienced planning professionals, particularly as workloads continue to increase. This is where secondment support can play an important role, helping councils maintain capacity, progress applications and respond to changing demands without compromising service delivery.

Curtis is looking forward to using his development management experience to support client teams through secondments and further developing his expertise across major planning schemes and appeals.

Our plans to grow the Town Planning team were a key reason he chose Waterman Aspen. Having previously worked with Jonny Pennick, he’s pleased to be joining a familiar colleague as the team continues to expand.

Supporting the next generation of planners

Curtis shared some advice for planners at the start of their careers in Town Planning. 

“Never be afraid to reach out to colleagues who have been in the business longer than you. In my experience, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, and asking for help is one of the best ways to learn.”

He sees this as particularly valuable even when working on secondment, where joining different client teams provides opportunities to gain experience on new projects and learn from people with different backgrounds.

The future of planning

As we marked World Town Planning Day on Sunday 8^th November, it’s a chance to recognise the important role planners play in shaping the places where we live and work, and to look ahead to how the profession is changing. 

Curtis believes the planning profession will continue to evolve over the next five to ten years, with technology playing an increasingly important role. He’s particularly interested in how AI could help local authorities process planning applications more efficiently by streamlining application validation while ensuring proposals are still carefully assessed. 

He’s looking forward to helping client teams manage increasing workloads and complex applications, while supporting the continued growth of our Town Planning team. 

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Find out more about our Town Planning team

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