25 years, 3 Peaks and still looking forward

It is difficult to believe but I have now been at Walsingham Planning for 25 years, and I was not even still at school when I started! I hesitate to say that the time has flown by but it seems to have gone pretty quickly. There have been highs and lows and many memorable moments - some more pleasant memories than others and of course many successes with hardly any failures. But we are looking forward not back, it is also now a year since Mark K and I took the Company on from Cliff. We are pleased with progress, the bank is happy and we have not had an exodus of clients, far from it, we still get new ones every month. So we are looking forward to the future with optimism, though I am hoping to bale out before my half century.

This year we have a group of hardy staff and associates who have agreed to take on the Yorkshire 3 Peaks challenge of 23 miles and about 5,000 ft of climbing in a 12 hour period. I will be amongst the starters when we set off in September, hopefully I will make it back in time for a beer before the pub closes even if not within the 12 hours. We will be raising money for Cancer Research in aid of our colleague Ros Walker who sadly died a little over a year ago. More on fund raising soon.

Meanwhile, my Premier Inn and Brewers Fayre project in Bicester was approved this week, there was a long time in PreApp negotiations but it paid off with a nice smooth path once the application was made, all the real work was done before we even filled out the form. That is the way more and more now. We just hope that Councils can keep devoting staff time to PreApp as cuts in public spending bite harder.

Lots of new jobs in the last few days with confirmed instructions coming to me in Braintree, Camberley and Witney - guess I ought to see what everyone else up to as well.

We still believe that CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy) will come as a nasty shock to many in the industry, the more people I mention it to the more I realise how little is known. We will be doing our bit organising a seminar for some local clients and contacts, let us know if you are interested.

I have also seen first real mention of a local pressure group campaigning for properties to be put on to the Community Asset Register - introduced in the Localism Act. Another bonkers idea completely at odds with all of the Government protestations of wanting to promote development. We will need to wait and see how widespread this becomes before jumping to conclusions - but some land and property owners could be choking over their cornflakes as the postman delivers Notices to them (course not, what an old fashioned idea - the postman coming at breakfast time).