INTRODUCTION

This Blog has a long history, dating from November 2005, when it appeared on the RTPI’s ‘Planning Matters’ website.

Since April 2010 it has been given its own spot here, and I continued to post articles at reasonably frequent intervals, although their appearance was naturally affected by the demands of my professional work. Now that I have retired from active legal practice, posts are likely to appear rather less frequently in future, but I doubt whether I shall be able to resist commenting on planning topics from time to time, and I have no intention of taking down my previous posts, which will remain available to be read by anyone who’s interested.

I should point out, however, that material published in this blog represented the law as it stood at the time when that material was first published. But the law may have changed since the original blog post was published, and so readers should not necessarily take blog posts published some time ago as being applicable now. The same applies to my replies to comments that have appeared over the years. Time does not usually allow me to go back and update earlier material, although I have occasionally done so where I thought it might be helpful.

Both the old material and the new articles were primarily written for planning professionals, so I make no apology for the fact that they contain a fair amount of jargon, abbreviations and acronyms with which a lay person may not be familiar. However, in view of the increasing number of readers from the general public now visiting the site, I did make an effort to spell out acronyms the first time they were used in a post.

Finally, the material on this website is made available on the distinct understanding that it does not represent legal advice and must not be acted upon without seeking appropriate advice from a properly qualified planning lawyer, based on the precise facts of your own case. The brief summaries of legal points set out in the published articles in this blog are necessarily lacking in detail, and so if you think a cited case or statutory provision mentioned there might be relevant to your own matter, you really must seek proper legal advice, rather than relying on the very brief summary given here. Decided cases can establish general principles, but the detailed application of those principles will depend very much on the facts of each matter.

THIS APPLIES WITH EQUAL FORCE TO ANY REPLIES THAT I MAY HAVE POSTED IN RESPONSE TO COMMENTS. SUCH REPLIES MUST NOT BE TAKEN TO REPRESENT LEGAL ADVICE AND MUST NOT BE RELIED UPON AS SUCH.

Every possible care has been taken in the preparation of this material but no responsibility can be accepted by me or by the site owner for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action in reliance on any material appearing in any part of this blog.

WHO IS HE?

I am a retired Solicitor who specialised in planning law for over 40 years. I was a member of the Law Society’s Planning Panel and a Legal Associate of the Royal Town Planning Institute. I started my planning law career with Hertsmere Borough Council in 1979, moving on to become Solicitor to the Council and Deputy Borough Secretary of Waverley Borough Council in 1982.

After six years at Waverley the next logical step would have been a Chief Officer post (Borough Secretary, Director of Administration or whatever), but I decided that I really wanted to be a full-time planning lawyer rather than a manager, and so I left local government in 1988 and, after a year with a small firm in Surrey who thought they had a planning law practice but didn’t, and were firmly against marketing (‘Not the done thing, dear boy.’), I followed the traditional advice to ‘Go West, young man’.

I spent about 8 years as a Senior Associate (whatever that means) in Clarke Willmott’s regional planning law team in Taunton and Bristol, and then joined Sisman Nichols in Bristol in 1997, where I was an Associate, and later a Consultant. I then became a Consultant Lawyer with KEYSTONE LAW, where I spent the last twelve very happy years of my legal career, having joined this dynamic and rapidly growing firm in 2009.

It was all a lot of fun, so much so that I somehow forgot to retire when the theoretical time to do so came around. But none of us can go on forever, and so towards the end of 2021 I finally decided to hang up my hypothetical wig (but not my pen), and leave it to my very able and energetic colleagues in KEYSTONE LAW's expanding planning law team to carry on the good work. Having retired from legal practice, I no longer offer or purport to give legal advice myself. Although my name remains on the Roll of Solicitors, I no longer have a practising certifcate, and so I am not now in a positon to hold myself out as (or 'pretend' to be be) a solicitor.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

Please note that copyright in all the material in this Planning Law Blog is held solely by Martin Goodall, and so this material may only be accessed for personal study, and may not be reproduced or republished in any form without the author’s prior written permission.