Victoria Lane Celebrates Success At The RTPI West Midlands Awards

Following the success of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) West Midlands Awards, Victoria Lane, Regional Chair and Area Manager in our Town Planning team, shares her thoughts…

“This year’s RTPI West Midlands Awards for Planning Excellence were held at Millennium Point in Birmingham on Friday 21^st June 2024. Winners will now go forward to the National Awards with the RTPI to be held in November 2024 at the London ceremony.   

This year, I wanted to dedicate the Chair’s award to a project or person who had successfully developed blue and green infrastructure into a development to improve our physical and mental health. Mental health, especially, is a cause close to my heart and the impact of COVID-19 has had a major impact on everyone mentally, as well as physically.   

It was my absolute pleasure to give the Chair’s Award to Trentham Garden Estate Beaver Project. It stood out to me in meeting my objectives and went beyond the objectives of its submission to improve access to outdoor spaces. Not only did the project provide essential infrastructure to assist with the beaver relocation programme, but provided a whole host of additional offerings within the estate to enhance the public’s wellbeing, such as dawn chorus walks, and the opportunity to experience the estate’s wonderful outdoor surroundings and nature at its best.  

The evening was a great success with around 160 guests in total. It was great to see so many planners gather, network and socialise in one space celebrating the achievements of our peers. Winners of the various awards were as follows:  

• Best Project – Luston Wetland
• Planning Authority of the Year – Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
• Young Planner of the Year – Frances Keenan
• Chair’s Award – Trentham Estate Beaver Project

With the new Labour government now in power, there are changes afoot for planners all around the country. The restoration of mandatory housing targets and our National Planning Policy Framework are already underway along with a renewed emphasis on local planning authorities to get Local Plans up to date as quickly as possible. They also propose additional planning officers to be recruited to speed up the planning process (300 across the country) which equates to roughly one additional planner per local authority.”