A faster growing economy, higher pay, and cutting emissions? We clearly can’t have this woke rubbish here.

Though to be fair, Guildford’s ruined castle game is strong

It’s also an element of siloisation. Several years ago I was in a planning meeting with leisure colleagues. Who asked for formal pitches with dedicated parking. Saying it met their ‘play quota.’

The idea that kids could play football in the street or on the green was alien to them.

I highly recommend reading the book And The Sun Shines Now. Which links this and other changes to wider social changes which has ripped the heart out of modern football. So much rings true. www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...

I'm not saying that this means that those on the left need to go full tory to win elections. Far from it. They just need to be better in selling what they are offering in clear, simple language that cuts through to people.

Do the consultation meaningfully as part of the Local Plan process. Focus it on placemaking and community creation. Then once the Local Plan is adopted, major sites have outline consent automatically for 5 years, and they go into details of reserved matters and developer contributions.

We have an endless consultation cycle where strategic planning is thrown out at a later stage, and each major application is a fight to get through both the Local Plan process and the Development Control process. Which gums everything up and leads to poor consultation.

Largely agree. Though meaningful reform to the process can reduce the burden on officers while speeding up development consent on sites where the planning principles are established in the local plan. So that they just work on detail once the plan is adopted.

The challenge is, we don't really know what the modal shift of e-scooters is.

The UK Government's assessment of the e-scooter trial estimated some modal shift towards car using survey and Google Directions API data. But 42% of e-scooter trips would have been walked.

www.gov.uk/government/p...