Tudor is a commercial and creative Town Planning consultant (MRTPI) with 12 years’ experience, specialising in urban regeneration and complex mixed use projects for both the private and public sector.
He spent the first part of his career in London, working on a range of residential led mixed use schemes, before diversifying to a range of different sectors and then relocating to Bristol in 2018.
As Head of Planning Strategy, Tudor is involved in strategic advice, feasibility appraisals, planning guidance and masterplans, placemaking, urbanism, community engagement, and planning applications.
If you weren’t in this career, what would you be?
I would run my own coffee shop. I love good coffee, talking to different people and creating spaces that people feel welcome. Over the years, I have thought about this alternative career path and even mapped out that my wife (she is a psychologist) would have a space in the coffee shop to do workshops and sessions, bringing mental health support to the local high street. May be a longer-term retirement plan!
What’s your favourite project you’ve worked on to date?
Royal Arsenal Riverside in Woolwich, London on behalf of Berkeley Homes. This project had everything. Formerly home to a walled-off private world that saw the manufacture of guns and explosives, munitions testing and a military academy, this area has been gradually transformed to a thriving new community with 5,000 new homes and new cultural, commercial and leisure quarters.
This scheme was filled with challenges – contamination, flood risk, eighteen listed buildings, a Crossrail Station, multiple masterplans, overlapping planning permissions, tall buildings, complex planning strategies, viability challenges and a new public park – but it was an incredibly rewarding project to work on. The most enjoyable part was watching the delivery. Seeing the buildings and spaces being used by new inhabitants, turning this discussed part of Woolwich into a new place has been amazing.
What are the key challenges that affect your sector, or are likely to in the next five years?
I think the sector/industry is fairly well versed on the key challenges affecting development. Delivering schemes, providing affordable homes, ensuring high quality design, creating jobs, protecting heritage, creating sustainable balanced communities, reducing carbon, providing biodiversity net gain, repurposing obsolete assets and adding social value being the big-ticket items.
However, I believe the key challenge will be finding appropriate methodologies and governance structures to rank and weight these different, often competing, priorities for each project / scenario to allow decision making to occur. Without this, unless there is significant public sector intervention, projects will not be able to viably deliver on every aspect to the standard expected. Either a compromise is needed, or we learn to prioritise key matters specific to that project.
What advice would you give your 20 year old self?
Buy a house as soon as you can (prices will keep going up). Bet on Leicester City winning the premier league (use the money to buy a house). Something called ‘Brexit’ is going to happen, so explore as much of Europe as possible. For work (and life in general), never underestimate the importance of good communication: listening, talking, writing, tone, body language, voice, manner, intonation. Opportunities and problems can be realised or resolved by good communication.
What is your proudest moment?
Becoming a dad.
Industry Bodies:
- Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute