Grow Places

GP 54: Upskilling Local Government: with Pooja Agrawal of Public Practice

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In this powerful episode of the Grow Places Podcast, Tom Larsson speaks with Pooja Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of Public Practice, a pioneering not-for-profit that places built environment professionals into local government roles to drive meaningful change.

Pooja shares her journey from growing up in Mumbai to becoming a passionate advocate for public service in the UK. She dives deep into the importance of multidisciplinary teams in local government, the challenges of resourcing in the public sector, and why empathy between public and private sectors is more vital than ever.

🔍 Episode Highlights

  • How Public Practice is placing professionals into councils to close skills gaps
  • The long-term value of design and spatial thinking in local government
  • Why 75% of associates stay in the public sector post-placement
  • The financial realities of local councils and their effect on planning
  • The role of empathy in public-private collaboration
  • Insights on the New Towns programme and the future of place-led development
  • International perspectives: what the UK can learn from Mumbai, Denmark, and more
  • Pooja’s vision for public sector confidence, leadership, and systems change

🌍 Learn more about Public Practice: https://www.publicpractice.org.uk
🎧 Listen and subscribe for more: https://www.growplaces.com/podcast
 

#PublicPractice #UrbanPlanning #BuiltEnvironment #PublicSector #PlaceMaking #Sustainability #NewTowns #Leadership #GrowPlaces

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the Grow Places Podcast, where we explore the virtuous circle of people, growth and place. Brought to you by Grow Places and hosted by our founder, Tom Larson.

SPEAKER_01:

Pooja, thank you very much for joining me today. How are you?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm doing good. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

Good, good. You've had a lovely breakfast, I hear.

SPEAKER_02:

I did. I can get to that now in a bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Go on, go on. Where would you have breakfast this morning?

SPEAKER_02:

So I went to attend Dining Street for breakfast this morning. I was invited amongst probably about 20 other people to encourage us to consider public appointments, which is, um, as I understand, as of today, non-exact roles in kind of arm's length organizations related to government. So, like in our sector, that would be Homes England or Environment Agency and so forth. Coffee was average and being gluten-free, I ate some fruit. So, you know, it was all right. But it did feel like being in a film, just walking through these corridors of power, really.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, amazing. And um, probably a nice segue, really, onto public practice, because obviously that's the the reason why you you were there, I guess. And the um public appointments kind of been the purpose, really, isn't it, of the organization. So why don't you tell us all a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. Interestingly, the call today was asking everyone in the room to consider public service and working for the public good. And that is exactly what public practice is all about. So, for those of you who don't know public practice, public practice is a not-for-profit organization, and we work with local councils to bring in placemaking and built environment skills into local authorities. My background is in architecture and I work quite a lot in urban design. I call myself an architect and a planner, but I'm neither those anymore, though I pretend to still be both of those things. But yeah, very much driven by improving our community, how our communities live in places, improving, I'd say, the everyday experience of places, which is what which is where I see the role of the state and local government to ensure that we have really well designed and beautiful gardens and parks and public housing and public infrastructure. And that's kind of where public practice comes in.

SPEAKER_01:

Really interesting. And and uh why do you feel personally? What why is that important to you? Do you think to do this kind of work?

SPEAKER_02:

I guess I've always been driven by socially impactful work, or maybe every step in my career has sort of moved closer and closer to that, making sure that my work had a positive public impact. I grew up in Mumbai, and I suppose when you grow up in a very hyper-urban city and a very dense city, but also, you know, as people would say, the developing world, you could argue about what that means today, but in a space where you know you're really faced by inequality. So I grew up very near the beach in Mumbai, and I, you know, lived in a seven-story apartment. You really get to know the people who you live around, but actually there's such an invisible line between people who can afford to build to live in an apartment versus people who live in kind of what people call the slums, I suppose. And that really the proximity of these two experiences is literally really next to each other, yet you don't cross those boundaries in a way. And the beach was always this amazing place where people came together. And actually, it was only when I left Mumbai to move to this country, and then when I'd go back, I started thinking about public space a lot more and the kind of value of that and actually the lack of that in Mumbai. So maybe that was very um influential in influencing my values, I suppose. And um, yeah, did architecture in my through all my degrees, you know, takes a really long time. And but I suppose I was always interested in the impact beyond the actual building. I was always interested in the kind of beyond the red line boundary, as it were, and sort of pushed that at a university, which I think at the time was probably more radical than it would be now. I think increasing the architecture, planning, you know, these are overlapping more, which is really positive. But at the time, creating a master plan as my kind of thesis project was quite a rare occurrence. Um, but yeah, basically, sort of every job I've taken after studying was testing different scales of design. So I actually worked for an interior designer for a bit, then worked at Publica in Urban Design Practice. I was actually one of their first employees, so testing really early ideas of um run by Lucy Musgrave. Uh, then worked, you know, at We Made That, also in Architecture and Urban Design Practice. And it was through the work there and Publica of working with the public sector as my client, I was really, really fascinated by the impact the public sector really had and the power they had in actually designing briefs. As an architect, you're given a brief, say, do this work. Whereas actually people behind the scenes, as it were, making those financial decisions, but also deciding what happens where was happening in city government in London at the time. So I basically joined the GLA, the Greater London Authority, and um worked there for a number of years.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, amazing. And um, and so how do you think that that experience then, personal and and professional, um, has given you a sense of the kind of the landscape within the public sector here in the UK, maybe first of all, and then the sort of the place that public practice kind of sits within that on the the the why to have public practice essentially?

SPEAKER_02:

As an architect, I suppose studying at university, the idea of becoming a public sector architect was never even in our radar in the 60s and the 70s, it was the most aspirational career opportunity and career path was to work in the public sector. And you know, Camden Council, the LGC, they had these huge, huge architecture practices, and actually about 80% of architects used to work in the public sector in in the 70s. But you know, fast forward thinking about when I studied about 30 years on, it was basically less than 1%. So that idea that the state, that the public sector is actually leading and shaping places and the direction of places was basically absent. And I guess the privatization of the public sector, like outsourcing, um, weakening the public sector really just all about sort of managing contractor than taking leadership and delivering contracts was the shift that happened, you know, post-Thatcher years. So, in that sense, I think the the role of the I think then when we started public practice about 10 years ago, but even now, there is a quite a big existential question about what the role of the state should be. And I think my own perception might have changed as well in the last 10 years, but we uh there was a very, I think Finn Williams, who I set up public practice with, and I really, really strongly believe that there was a role for local government to really lead the way and take the power to make decisions and be much more confident, I think, as opposed to just stepping back and not taking risks and letting other people make decisions because it's not on them. So I suppose, like fundamentally, and I guess philosophically, that's where public practice positioned itself when we first started this idea that the public sector leads the way. Um, I think where we are now, sort of 10 years on, I think it's really interesting. I still really, really believe in the role local government needs to take in leadership and leading the way, but I can see the huge shift in the sort of financial circumstances of local authorities, even in the last you know, eight to ten years. I have seen such a huge shift. And um I think in real terms, planning teams have felt have seen a cut of about 43% in their in their budgets, and local government will largely it's been about 20%. So this is you know the years of austerity. So it does beg the question, what now? Where we haven't seen the economy growing, even with this new government. People are feeling hopeful and optimistic in some ways, but you know, you know, house building has really, really stalled. Shifts have been made at the moment in terms of how much social housing needs to be delivered in London just to bring the market back up. We could argue about what we think about that, but basically, people things are quite desperate at the moment. So I suppose there's questions that I've been playing with and trying to understand what is the future of local government, where I suppose the private sector was always seen as a kind of delivery partner for the public sector in the last sort of 10, 15 years. I'm also interested in the third sector and civic society playing a bigger part. Um in, you know, there's obviously really inspiring opportunities, like examples, sorry, of like community-led housing and community-led services. I feel like that's happening because the public sector's not can't take that responsibility. And even though I still feel like it should be the state's responsibility, there needs to be a different way of working in a much more collaborative way, which is sure the private sector, but is also building on a wider group of people that really want change.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and um I think obviously both both actors, if you want to call it that, public and private, obviously have a huge role to play. And I think if you can build some kind of consensus around a shared set of ideas or at least some kind of direction of travel, uh whether it's at project level or bigger than that, I think um that's really quite quite powerful. Um, and then allow different, you know, different entities to to do what what they're better at or what they're resourced to do at any given time, or what the and I think that that sort of um tailored approach is really what we really need. And it's really about the people at the end of the day, isn't it, behind the scenes who are who are involved in any one one project. And then I don't know what you what you think really like from the work you you've done over that 10-year period, you know, what what do you feel has worked really well over that period? Um and maybe the opposite of that, maybe what's been hard or what hasn't kind of worked.

SPEAKER_02:

So I think I'll I'll take that in a few different levels, actually responding to your previous the previous point as well. So in the last, I suppose, decade, um us as an organization, we first started fundamentally in London's southeast. We grew out of the Greater London Authority, as I mentioned earlier, and we basically worked in bringing primarily urban design skills into London boroughs. I became CEO about four years ago, and my focus has really been scaling the program, the associate program, across all of England, and we've worked really, really closely with initially Homes England, but more recently with MHCLG to do that and build those relationships and bring in those skills across all of England. So, one, we've scaled, because that's how my impact scales, but also we've definitely diversified the skills we're bringing into local councils. So more regeneration skills, more sustainability skills, more digital skills, but actually ironically, more planning skills. And if anything, at the moment, that's the number one skill we're getting from councils, that there's a huge gap in planning roles, and um we're really trying to support councils, and we do that in quite a creative way, trying to bring in a wider pool of skills and talent into those roles. Um, but yeah, that that's a kind of interesting shift we've seen. I think um, you know, what's worked well, what's worked really well, and I find so inspiring is just hearing the stories of the people that come through our program and supporting them in their journey. So just to help explain, most people that come to us, over 90% of people, come from the private sector, and they most of them have never considered working in the public sector before. So we A, inspire them and motivate them to work in the public sector, and we do that in a number of ways, but primarily talking about the positive impact you can have by working in the public sector. So we make it a really exciting, kind of cool place to work. Um, the second thing is we uh help them transition from the private to the public sector. So we have this cohort of people who support each other and we help them understand decision making and finances. You know, it's it they know their stuff, it's more just understanding how the public sector works. And then finally, we just give them that platform to become much more confident in what they're doing and really help to manage their expectations. For some people, the changes they'll make will be actually just getting teams to work in a more collaborative way across silos in their region or within the council. And some people it might be actually delivering or being part of a process of a much bigger project and delivering, you know, a huge nature-led recovery master plan. So it's very different in terms of the impact these people have. But in the last decade, we've placed about 300 people. We've just hit our hundred authorities, and about 75, just over 75% of those people we've placed in are still in local government about three years after we've placed them. Given how things are so tough at the moment, about 10% of people want to leave work in the public sector, 8% are going to retire in our sector, and lots of people are moving into freelancing and agency stuff because you get paid more. I'm really, really proud that these people are continuing to stay in the public sector.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And um, and you know, we're uh we're a private company, we're a developer, we but we interact with the the public sector at every stage of the process, you know. Two things can't go um forward without each other. You know, you you can't get the the um the the delivery around growth or housing or other things without um good partnerships, and and and equally um obviously a private company can't get anything done without the public sector, so there is an intrinsic kind of value there between these parties and ability to work kind of closer together, I think is is is really helpful. And so the the why from our perspective is really clear, and I think it's great that there are more skilled people um passionate and and and working within um the roles that we need them to across the planning and development um sector. So that it's it's really really important what you're doing. And um, so maybe then what what what are those things that you're finding really hard then? Is it you've sort of touched on some of the people aspect about obviously encouraging people to go, the obvious obvious things about about pay and other things, which will obviously be factors for people, particularly at the moment when it's hard to you know afford to live, frankly, for most people. So so yeah, how how do you see that that that things that are hard or maybe things that are maybe a bit harder than you thought now that you've kind of got under the bonnet of of uh the public sector?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a really good question. I actually think we have continued, and it shouldn't surprise me, but it does surprise me the interest from the supply side. So, in terms of candidates of people coming into our program, we we do kind of two um rounds of open expressions for candidates who want to apply to the program, and we basically get somewhere between 200 to 500 people applying every six months. So it's really amazing, it's really competitive. There's all these people who want to, you know, change their careers and make that move to the public sector. What has changed in the last decade? I guess salaries have sort of balanced out. Interestingly, we um I didn't say this before, but we're in this kind of mid-career stage, so sort of 30 to 55k. And actually, a lot of people that come to us come from architecture backgrounds, and it's actually play like quite similar salaries. It's not actually worse in the public sector. You can often get a bit of a salary jump depending on where you are in your career.

SPEAKER_01:

Um that probably says more about architecture than I know it does.

SPEAKER_02:

Says a lot about architecture, doesn't it? Uh, but it you know, it's it's often a sidestep, really. And I think what's the private sector has hugely caught up at 10 years ago in terms in terms of ways of working. So before you'd say, you know, you get great benefits, you can work flexibly, you can work from home, and obviously all those things, and now the offer is so much better from the private sector in many ways. So, actually, really, what people are still coming to us for is really caring about making an impact. What is hard is just where we are at the moment in terms of the economics. Local councils are really, really struggling financially. And there's a whole myriad of reasons why things seem so difficult at the moment. But you know, we've had Brexit, which is having an impact now in terms of construction costs, and you will know that in terms of skills supply. We've had COVID, which is again making, I think it's kind of you can feel it coming through now. But you know, a huge, huge pressure on councils really is adults in social care, which, you know, is one one aspect, but something that relates so directly to us is temporary accommodation. And um London at the moment is paying four million pounds a day on temporary accommodation, and that is really bankrupting councils, and it's such a catch-22 because obviously that is such a the challenge here is the lack of social housing. But because of the amount of money that's going into temporary accommodation, councils are also just so financially constrained. And I think we're just uh how we get out of the situation is a question, but like very practically MHCLG's funding is enabling us to be more affordable to councils, but sometimes councils to pay like to sign off evenÂŁ3,000 is going up to chief exec level, and that's just a sign of how difficult things are. Like councils can't give us that money, which is you know just covering our costs as a not-for-profit. So, yeah, that's hard. The second thing that's hard, and this is a bit more specific, but I think it's really relevant. We are inundated by us for DM planners, for development management planners. And I feel like we need we need good DM officers, of course we do, but I also feel like that's a sign of the times where really your local plan should be what is leading the way, and DMs should just be almost just processing applications rather than being the decision makers. But because local plans are not up to date, that this you're not thinking of that strategic, holistic, place based approach, you're doing case by case, looking at each thing one by one. And then most things are going to appeal anyway. So the system there is also quite broken where you've got this huge backlog kind. Councils are asking for DM officers, but what they really want, what they should be looking at, are strategic planners to look at strategic planning or sustainability officers looking at flood risk zones and environmentalists and you know, taking a much low or you know, housing officers looking at the next 10 to 15 years of housing supply. So we're we're in this space where councils are always on the back foot and not being able to be more proactive and strategic. And that shift is, I think, as well, is a really that there's going to be a lot of change in government in the next few years with devolution, local government reorganisation, and the planning infrastructure bill and reform all coming in at once. And in some ways, it's quite exciting to see quite a lot of change, but it's also quite messy for this all to be implemented in the next few years. So there's quite a lot of thinking in our sector at the moment about what that looks like for local government.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And and do you have a sense of that? Are there any kind of uh maybe what you'd like to see or or or any insights into actually what how you think that might land in terms of that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, there's we are doing quite a lot of that thinking at the moment, and um I'm yeah, really lucky to be in those rooms around strategic planning and being part of the working group that led straight to MHCLG and the minister around that space, but also behind the scenes helping and supporting MHCLG about how they might implement that from our kind of day-to-day experience of working with councils. I mean, from my perspective, I think the most important thing is multidisciplinary skills, and public practice has always looked at that. And we can talk about housing delivery as much as we want, and we can talk about needing more planners, but really we need to be those strategic skills, is what I think is really important, and actually design skills, which you know, the architects we put into councils are not designing buildings, they're they might be doing actually development management for strategic sites, but it's some of that kind of creative problem solving that I think is what we need in this middle period. So we're gonna go from whatever 300-ish authorities to about 100-ish authorities in say five to ten years. And what that middle space looks like, I think are people who are okay and up for change being able to make those kind of medium and long-term decisions at the same time. And for me, fundamentally, that's spatial skills, which is obvious to us. But actually, when people are talking about LGR and local government reorganization, that is it's all about legal stuff, it's all about HR and it's all about like governance, and really it should be led by places.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And um, and so so what you're what you're doing, what you you've established here with others at public practices, um it's it's mission-led, it's purpose-led, however you want to describe that. Um, it's leadership in a sense. And and how are you finding that that uh process of trying to lead, of trying to make systems change within um government and and and which is is can move quickly, but doesn't always do so.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think our approach as public practice is really you touched on this earlier, it's about people, really. What we're doing is bringing people into local councils, and for me, it's almost a collection of all those raindrops together, those little changes in processes and the little changes in terms of thinking that each of those associates is bringing collectively, is making a much larger holistic change in terms of expectations for you know what the role of the state is, and I guess that's how we started this conversation. So for me, that is critical, and how we build that confidence in local authorities to be the drivers of change is really where all these associates, I think over time build that confidence in local authorities.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, super interesting. And then you mentioned some of the metrics, whether you've placed 300 people or within 100 authorities, which is obviously amazing. But how how else are you uh kind of measuring the the positive impact of of what goes on? Whether that's just within um your organization or the people, uh uh, and maybe sort of linked to that is is what what value do you think the public sector think of this? Like what what what do senior officers of the councils who where you've placed people, what what do they say back to you in terms of the the value that you've brought to the process, really?

SPEAKER_02:

I think collecting stories is just a really, really important part of the process. We can give you these hard numbers, but actually each person we've placed has their own story of the impact they've made, or the what they've also learned. It's they learn a lot from this process, is not about them just giving, but those collections of stories and what we call impact stories is something we collect. And we launched a magazine called Public Notice as well. We've got two different editions of that, and that was also a way of collecting not only our associates, but other stories and other projects that have been led by the public sector and trying to showcase that and platform that. So there's something there about celebrating the public sector and celebrating good places. There's something about us advocating and continue to advocate for working in the public sector and around um really bringing more diverse people into the public sector, which we haven't talked about in much detail, but we do quite a lot in that space. And then there's something more culturally about ways of working. And most of the um officers who've taken on some one of our associates will say that there has been a shift in the way of working in their teams. It's a really positive thing. It's above 80% of officers would strongly agree with that or agree with that, but also say that we're able to bring in those skill sets and multi-dip multidisciplinary skills that they were just really struggling to recruit. And then I think broader than that, you know, you talk about public practices as leaders in a way, yeah. We very, I think the the things that we've realized more and more as we've matured as an organization is the influence we have. And we have so much knowledge from all of these people and the our relationships with all of these local councils that we're able to influence government and policy in a way that's by working closely with them. We're not really campaigners, we're not a research organization, we're doing things on the ground, but we're able to feed that to government. But also, we've realized how valuable our network is. These people working in councils are super, super motivated, super, super bright. And actually, I think the private sector and the third sector see the value that we have with this group of people. So we're looking to do more work with and do more kind of collaborative experimental ways of working and thinking, and maybe even at least public practice labs, like spaces to bring people together and solve problems together. And we're just exploring different ways we can actually get the public sector to give us a bit of money for sponsorship. We're, you know, a not-for-profit organization, but to do that in a way that actually helps the way just think slightly differently than we're doing at the moment because we're stuck at the moment, so and we want to change that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and um those feelings of being stuck and and wanting to change things, I don't think are limited to you. I think it's uh you could even say it's sort of uh it's kind of a British thing at the moment. It's kind of quite a lot of uh sort of um, you know, that sort of thrust of the maybe early 2000s and and and earlier in terms of our economy and kind of the growth and and and the the sense and the feeling around the place is is slightly slightly changed. And I think in that we obviously have to to be very local and to to approach things in a very local specific way, which we do as a business and know you do, whether that's local to a borough or whether it's local to um uh a different city within the UK. But equally we all have to look outwardly as well, don't we? Because uh see what's going on in the world and see where uh things are happening, whether it's Mumbai and like we've talked before about you know that kind of like optimistic, pacey growth, and uh or whether it's um different kind of um structures like you may see in Scandinavia or something where the where the public sector is is is still stronger than maybe it is here. So so so how how do you think about that, maybe professionally at public practice, or where do you draw your inspiration from and and and and where can we learn from?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think looking internationally is a really good thing at the moment. I think it's so true. It does feel like uh yeah, maybe you're so right, the British culture is just feeling like, you know, I don't know what to do about this. So a few things. I think, given that we've been talking about local government so much, I think it's fascinating how little funding local government actually has in proportion to GDP compared to the rest of Europe. So it's something like two to four percent of the GDP is local government funding, whereas you mentioned Scandinavia and Denmark, I think it's over 30%, and the average in Europe is 14%. So there's there is a sort of cultural question here around again what the role of local government is or should be in terms of growth and actually driving some of the economic growth. And um, yeah, I guess there's a cultural aspect around space and time and how quickly we want to change things. Um I went to Mumbai over Christmas, just to yeah, uh, and it was just amazing how you can feel the growth on the ground, like you can smell it. There's like it's it's actually terrible the air, the air quality, and there's so much construction, it's actually insane. And also, you know, I disagree with a lot of the interventions that have been made in terms of planning decisions and highways and motorways just literally cutting across the sea and taking away, you know. I'm I almost started this conversation with the value of the public beach has disappeared in many parts of the city. But at the same time, there's just this like hunger for growth, and and you can see things just really, really shifting and moving. So there's that. But there's also perhaps what you were asking around inspiration, I think about learning from other countries, how they organize local government, what how their place-based teams are formed. Some of the more the stuff that we have weirdly found ourselves being really interested in is like the kind of workforce organization and team design is done so differently in different parts of the country. And I'm a fellow at the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose, and we've been talking quite a lot about how we might be able to support them and vice versa in looking at that sort of public sector innovation, as they would call it, the capabilities that different councils have across the country, uh across the world, and how they measure it and what we can learn from different case studies as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Are there any sort of practical examples of that or that kind of come to mind or case studies that you can see?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they they've done quite a lot of work on this recently, and they were they were actually looking across various different city governments in specifically about how they've how quickly they could redeploy teams and work in different multidisciplinary ways with COVID or with food shortages or and so forth. And there's really, really interesting examples. So it's called the Public Sector Capability Index, and you can find it online, and they've given a whole range of interesting examples of and that it's not specifically to place-based work, but it's still thinking about different city governments and how they organize themselves, which is really interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And where do you see where do you see if you call it place-based work or built environment? Or you know, do you have a sense for where in the hierarchy in the UK we kind of sit in some of those kind of conversations about priorities? Because obviously you such it already, you know, if if if councils are in financial troubles or if you know the bins aren't getting collected, or whatever it might be, there's some kind of shorter term, maybe higher priority things that kind of come to the fore. Um, what we talk about in our industry is long-term change, isn't it? Whether it's delivering housing or or whatever it might be, it's it's not uh limited to a quick fix.

SPEAKER_02:

So I think I'd like to think every every local authority would like to take a much more place-based approach. But as we touched on earlier, I just think councils are so financially constrained at the moment that you know the recent situation of bins and Birmingham is a great example. They're just there's really basic services that councils are really struggling to provide, and that unfortunately is where uh a like a normal person, as in people not in our sector, but an everyday person's relationship with their local council is is the bins, really, actually. And and the trust in councils is so low at the moment because of this. So we I I just feel like at the moment, perhaps we're not taking that longer-term view, we're not taking that place-based approach in a way that we really, really should be. But it's partly like getting councils out of this current situation of being really financially constrained.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and um, and what do you think, anyone listening to this from the private sector, what what can what can they do? What would be your kind of whether it's called to action or whether it's like a a um a thing that you would you would say now or to to organisations to help your mission or support?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think broader than public practice. I would just say to lean on empathy a bit more. I know we've just got to this point of really quite adversarial relationships between us and them, public versus private, and not even to talk about the pub, like more broader public, but actually just the public and the private sector really butting heads against each other. And I think empathy is required from both sides to really move away from the situation we have at the moment from the private sector's perspective, is just really understanding how difficult things are for councils at the moment and how hard local officers in planning teams are working and how overstretched they are and how demotivated they are by partly the amount of abuse they get from the social media or from the private sector as well. So there's something there about leaning into the kind of human relationships again between your planning officer and your work. And more broadly, I guess, or less broadly for public practice. As I said, we're a not-for-profit organization. We really, really want to keep growing our mission, growing our impact. So we're always up for a conversation about collaborative working and what more we can do. We've got an amazing group of people and so much knowledge that we'd like to share. So just to reach out and get in touch with me, and I'm always happy to have a conversation.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, amazing. And um, yeah, I'm sure everyone will do that. And then maybe just to finish then, Pooja, you've you mentioned to me about New Towns and some of those bigger um yeah, really big strategic, quite bold things that that are on the table at the moment. If if we're now sort of thinking optimistically, how how do you see those things coming about?

SPEAKER_02:

Optimistically? Yes, let's be optimistic. Sure. I think conceptually, new towns are really, really interesting. They should really be about vision and they should really be about aspiring for a new way of living, and that's kind of the history of New Towns. I think this version of New Towns is kind of like old Newtowns, they're mainly urban extensions, so some of them are not. And I was really heartened to see the focus on place and vision, in fact, in the task force report that came out recently. And I know that that felt like it was there was quite a lot of buy-in. And I was there for the launch and heard that from the Secretary of State as well. And just to hear that sometimes is actually quite reassuring. Let's see what actually happens. But just starting with the importance of place has to be at the heart of New Towns. It's complicated, New Towns. They are a long-term approach, which is also interesting because this government probably won't see the benefits of any of those housing numbers. I mean, arguably, some of them are probably will be, could be brought forward quite quickly and were chosen for exactly that reason. But that's seeing this government is definitely a two-term government. There's quite a lot of conversation about development corporations as the actual um mode to deliver this, which needs a very confident public sector because it basically needs CPO powers. It needs to be really clear about what they're doing. So, you know, it's really interesting. It will need to build a lot of trust from communities to really take this forward. And where trust is so low at the moment, that will be a really fundamental challenge for the government to take these forward, but also a really interesting opportunity to be more confident to try and create better holistic places and to really put in that infrastructure like roads, like railways, links, and so forth, which was what will be needed to unlock these sites. So, yeah, it is an interesting time.

SPEAKER_01:

Then do you see you see public practices role? Probably, you know, the why, if we go back to the very start of this conversation, um around public appointments and and and that role. Clearly, there's going to be a big requirement for resourcing of that. Um, and is that something that you're looking to do and for candidates to help with?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So we really are we are speaking to government at the moment for how we can support them in, you know, for the rest of their term. I definitely see the role of those architects. We can sell with architects in terms of actually delivering these things on the ground, knowing what it's like to deliver projects and having that skill set and knowledge in shaping some of the early thinking about how these places are designed and delivered. But really, I think there's such an interesting opportunity here for sustainability and net zero and what does that mean for these new places, which was something obviously that was not considered in the previous models of new towns. So we really need to bring in that thinking and should be radical thinking into these new towns now. So I will continue to lean on the need for these multidisciplinary people to be making these decisions at these early stages of shaping and delivering these towns. And I really hope we'll be there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, Pija, thank you very much for your for your time on this conversation. Um, we grow places wholeheartedly believe in multidisciplinary approaches, um, the the public-private partnership and that being essential, uh, not just for like day-to-day things happening, but actually for you know, for the type of kind of um society and culture that we want to live in and operate in. So it's really good to talk to you today and um grateful for everything you're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Grow Places podcast. For more information, visit growplaces.com and follow us at We Grow Places across all social channels. See you next time.

unknown:

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