Free The Planner by Tom Campbell Page A

clearly she didn’t want to meet. She was v busy and, he should have guessed this, not just with work. But it had never been the plan to go back out with Alice. He crossed the bridge, and went over the water to the train station.

5
    9 February
    Consultation and involvement activities should also seek to empower communities and neighbourhoods.
    – The London Plan , Section 2.64
     
    ‘Of course, the reason I’m still in this job is because of all the glamorous locations,’ said Rachel.
    It was a Saturday morning, and James was doing something that had to be taken seriously, but wasn’t terribly important. He was consulting the public. It was something he had done many times before. For much of the wet summer and sullen autumn, he had spent his Tuesday evenings, his Thursday afternoons and not-particularly-precious Saturday mornings trying to meet the eyes of his fellow citizens, to ascertain the thoughts and feelings of the people he was supposed to be helping.
    And this particular project really was going to help them. He had worked on it long enough to be certain. The masterplan for Sunbury Square would result in thirty new houses and 250 flats spread across six low-rise blocks, all compliant with energy-­efficiency best-practice guidelines, and of which 35 per cent would be affordable for low-income families and a further 10 per cent reserved for designated key workers in the borough’s health and education sectors. There would be eight retail units, ranging in size from 500 to 2,000 square feet, a nursery and new playground. Two existing doctors’ surgeries would be merged into an improved health centre with paediatric facilities, and there would be a piece of public art commissioned by the Arts Council.
    Although in practice it was quite straightforward, on paper it had been almost impossibly difficult. The masterplan crossed the boundaries of two local development frameworks and would need to be signed off by transport, housing, environmental and regeneration assessors and approved at council and city level, and possibly by the Secretary of State. And then the whole thing would have to be funded. There would need to be transport infrastructure investment, and there would need to be money from local, regional and national government. It probably wouldn’t work without some match funding from the European Development Fund, and the developers would have to be persuaded to increase their costs and reduce their margins. In all likelihood, getting the planning consent and the funding package agreed would take longer than the Second World War. And before any of this happened, they had to complete the public consultation.
    ‘It’s very good of you to do this with me,’ said James.
    ‘Tell me about it. It’s not even my project,’ said Rachel.
    So here he was again. This time he was in Clifford’s, a once state-of-the-art shopping centre that had been admired by a group of highly influential but now generally despised planners in the late 1970s for its durable concrete-composite walkways, integrated multi-storey car park and smoked glass ceiling. He could at least see the point of holding a consultation here. There was little point in searching for the local residents of Sunbury Square in the public library, arts centre or any of the other things that the council provided for them. No, this was their natural habitat: if they weren’t working in shops, then generally they were buying things in them.
    But at least he wasn’t alone. Rachel, deservedly the most popular member of Southwark Council’s Planning Directorate, was with him as they stepped on to a raised platform in the very centre of Clifford’s, directly under the glass atrium, at the intersection of four broad avenues of shopping units. Beside them was a coffee kiosk and a little grouping of indoor plants, which may have been natural – it was practically impossible to tell, let alone know what that meant. James unfolded the camping table he had