Northern Ireland Planning Conference 2022

Kate Bentley is Director of Planning and Building Control at Belfast City Council, a position she was appointed to in August 2021. With over 20 years local authority experience, Kate has a passion for ensuring that planning makes a positive difference. She believes that planning and building control services are facilitators not gatekeepers and that they should have a strong customer focus, not just for applicants, but also for those who want to be involved in shaping places around them. Previously Kate led the Planning Service at Angus Council in Scotland. The service was then expanded to align Community Planning and Spatial Planning – bringing engagement and people centred services to the fore. Under Kate’s leadership the Planning and Building Control services went from strength to strength with the Building Control team gaining ISO accreditation for their processes as well as Customer Service Excellence accreditation. The Planning Performance Framework for the Council showed continuous improvement culminating in an all green RAG rating in 2019/20 – one of only three councils in Scotland to achieve this.

Dominic Curran is responsible for all property-related issues for the British Retail Consortium, ranging from business rates to the future of high streets and landlord and tenant law. He has several years’ experience working on property and land matters, having been closely involved in policy development at the Greater London Authority under two Mayors. Prior to this he has had extensive experience of lobbying Government, both working on behalf of local authorities on housing and planning matters as well as six years working in Parliament.

Nathan Coyle FRSA is the Director of UK-based civic innovation organisation, New Union. During the various lockdowns in the UK, Nathan organised a team of activists to run a global tactical urbanism festival called Rethink Re:Place which looked to use the practice to continue community-led placemaking activities in the face of funding cuts. During the week-long festival, they interviewed industry leaders sharing best practices, ran various workshops with local governments across the world, and held a hackathon attended by placemaking professionals, community activists, and decision-makers.

Kieran Donnelly was appointed to the post of Comptroller and Auditor General in September 2009 and has been on the Audit Office Senior Management Team since 1997. Previous posts included head of Value for Money Audit and Head of Financial Audit. Kieran is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and over the years has worked on a wide range of public reports on governance topics. In 2019 he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the Queen’s birthday honours list for services to the Northern Ireland Audit Office.

Geraint Ellis is Professor of Environmental Planning in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University Belfast and Co-Editor of the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. He has been appointed by the Taoiseach as an independent member of the National Economic and Social Council and is also a member of the Assessment Panel for Architecture, Built Environment and Planning of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework 2021. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles, covering issues such as the way planning relates to energy, health and marine issues, including recently co-authoring reports for the Environmental Protection Agency and the European Commission. He has recently stood down as a Director of Belfast Healthy Cities, and is a founding member of the Editorial Board of the Cities & Health Journal, for which he was the lead editor of its Covid-19 Special Issue.

David Gavaghan has established Aurora Prime Real Estate Limited and is seeking to raise £50 million locally and internationally to invest in Grade A office space in Belfast. Previously he was Executive Director of Quintain Estates and Development plc. He is the former Chief Executive of Titanic Quarter Limited and prior to that was Chief Executive of the Strategic Investment Board Limited for six years. David was also Chair of CBI Northern Ireland from 2016-2018 having previously been Vice Chair.

Debbie Harper is an Associate Director managing Arup’s Carbon & Climate Change and Planning, Policy & Economics Teams in Scotland, Northern Ireland and North East England. She has led complex consenting applications for a wide variety of large infrastructure projects. In particular, Debbie has detailed knowledge of the consenting process for large energy projects and a particularly strong focus on stakeholder engagement, devising and delivering stakeholder engagement plans for challenging projects.

Angus Kerr is Chief Planner and Director of the Department for Infrastructure Northern Ireland Regional Planning Directorate. Angus was appointed as Director in January 2012 and is responsible for regional planning and developing planning legislation and policy in line with Ministerial direction. Angus is a chartered Town Planner with over 25 years’ experience working in a wide range of planning posts across government. Angus was Project Director for the planning reform and transfer project which was responsible for reforming the planning system and transferring the majority of planning functions to the new 11 Councils on 1 April 2015.

Gary McGhee is the Partner in Carson McDowell LLP who heads the firm’s Planning and Environmental Law Team, which he established over 20 years ago. Gary is one of the few solicitors in NI who specialises exclusively in planning and environmental law. Similarly, Gary is also one of the few solicitors in the jurisdiction to be qualified as a Legal Associate of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Gary specialises in the co-ordination of major planning applications, representation of clients at planning appeals and major public inquiries and the instigation / defence of judicial reviews of planning / environmental decisions. Gary has represented clients at over 60 planning appeals and major public inquiries and has been involved in most of the major planning and environmental judicial reviews in NI over the course of the last two decades. Gary became a partner in Carson McDowell in 2004 and is a member of the UK Environmental Law Association (UKELA) and the Environment and Planning Law Association for NI (EPLANI). Gary is described in Chambers and Partners 2016 as 'market-leading' and as having 'a wealth of experience in planning inquiries and judicial review', while The Legal 500 2016 praises him for his ‘focused advice'.

Daisy Narayanan is the Senior Manager - Placemaking and Mobility at the City of Edinburgh Council where she leads on delivering a city-wide integrated approach to transport and placemaking. Daisy is on the Board of Architecture & Design Scotland and a member of the Evidence Group for Scotland’s Climate Assembly. She was on the Active Travel Task Force set up by the Minister for Transport and the Islands and is a member of the Scottish Transport Awards judging panel. Drawing on her previous experience working as an architect and urban designer in India, Singapore, England and Scotland, Daisy believes passionately in the importance of creating places for people: places that reflect and complement the communities that live in them.

Dr Louise O’Kane joined Community Places as a Planner in October 2008. She now also holds the role of Head of Engagement. Community Places is a voluntary sector not-for-profit organisation. It provides independent and impartial planning advice and support to individuals and communities, facilitates community planning and supports community engagement in projects, programmes and policy development. Louise has over 15 years’ experience of working in the areas of spatial planning, community engagement, community planning and conflict transformation. Most recently, Louise managed a Community Planning is here: Get Involved! Civic Activism Project and an Erasmus+ European Community Participation in Planning Project working with partners in Milan, Aveiro and Belfast. Louise is currently co-ordinating the regional Participatory Budgeting Works Project.

James Orr has a background in law, leadership and town planning. He worked for 18 years as Director of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in N Ireland based at Castle Espie and for the last ten years for Friends of the Earth. His currents interests are the Rights for Nature and movement building using a social ecology model.

Marie Ward is the Chief Executive of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, a position she took up in October 2019. Marie has been a director in the Council since April 2015 and has worked at a senior level in local government for over ten years. During that time, Marie was responsible for Enterprise, Regeneration and Tourism in Newry, Mourne and Down; Marie led on the development of the Council's shared services site in Downpatrick and is currently leading on the delivery of a major regeneration scheme for Newry City.

Professor Michael Batty CBE FRS FBA FAcSS FRTPI is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he is Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He was also appointed Chair of the Digital Task Force for Planning in 2021. This independent expert panel has been formed by a group of influential thought leaders across a broad spectrum relating to planning and digital technology. Mike has worked on computer models of cities and their visualisation since the 1970s and his most recent publications The New Science of Cities (MIT Press, 2013), Inventing Future Cities (MIT Press, 2018), and the edited volume Urban Informatics (Springer 2021) reflect this focus on the applications of digital technologies to urban planning. He has been the editor of Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, since 1982. Mike is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the Royal Society (FRS), the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). He was awarded the CBE in the Birthday Honours List in 2004. He received the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (2015) and the Gold Medal of the Royal Town Planning Institute (2016).