Meet the Board

Susan is a Chartered Town Planner with over 30 years' experience as a planning practitioner in local government and over 13 years in the development industry. She was Head of Planning for six years at Northampton Borough Council and has a proven track record in successfully managing the department through a difficult period of change and transformation. Since 2014 Susan has worked as an independent planning consultant working with both public and private sector clients.  She has practical experience of dealing with a wide range of projects from rural exception sites to new settlements and sustainable urban extensions with a proven track record of working in partnership in a multi-agency and disciplinary environment. Susan was Chair of the Board of Trustees from July 2019 to December 2022 and was RTPI President 2023.

Susan is a Chartered Town Planner with over 30 years' experience as a planning practitioner in local government and over 13 years in the development industry. She was Head of Planning for six years at Northampton Borough Council and has a proven track record in successfully managing the department through a difficult period of change and transformation. Since 2014 Susan has worked as an independent planning consultant working with both public and private sector clients.  She has practical experience of dealing with a wide range of projects from rural exception sites to new settlements and sustainable urban extensions with a proven track record of working in partnership in a multi-agency and disciplinary environment. Susan was Chair of the Board of Trustees from July 2019 to December 2022 and was RTPI President 2023.

Lindsey Richards BA (Hons) DipTP FRTPI

Lindsey is a chartered town planner with over 30 years’ experience in planning, design and delivery. She has extensive background primarily working in the public sector, experienced in community engagement and bringing together multi-disciplinary teams to deliver key housing projects.  Lindsey’s previous roles included leading the planning team at Milton Keynes Partnership, responsible for the expansion of Milton Keynes and introducing the Milton Keynes Tariff.  Lindsey moved to English Partnerships (now Homes England) in 2009 to head up the delivery team in the Midlands. 

Lindsey’s last role was Head of Planning at Homes England, where she worked  in a consultancy role providing specialist advice to Homes England delivery teams. Lindsey was responsible for driving design quality standards and introducing BfL12 ( forerunner to BfHL) as an assessment tool on Homes England sites. She was a member of the Garden Town and Villages Programme Board and worked closely with DLUHC on policy formulation.  Lindsey strongly advocates the value that early community engagement contributes to projects and oversaw the introduction of a community engagement strategy and toolkit to support Homes England projects. 

Lindsey was Head of Profession within Homes England. She undertook a mentoring role to promote the profession and support licentiate members.  Lindsey established the Planners Network within the Agency and oversaw  training and Homes England annual planning conference. 

Lindsey stepped down from her role at Homes England in April 2023 to concentrate on her Vice-Presidential role with the RTPI.

Lindsey is a member of the General Assembly of the RTPI, vice chair of the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee and became a Fellow in 2018. She is RTPI President 2024.

Lindsey is a Trustee for Design: Midlands

Helen is a Strategic Planner with over 30 years’ experience working across public and private sectors, both in the UK and internationally. Her specialism includes regeneration, masterplanning, inclusive healthy placemaking, development management, infrastructure planning, strategic policy development, community engagement and service improvement. She has led major development schemes such as Oak Wharf, a canal redevelopment site in Hackney, London and a Model City Plan for over 4 million people in Lagos, Nigeria, and more recently leading on a range of Garden Town developments and urban extensions for mixed use schemes comprising housing, schools and major infrastructure of more than 6,000 dwellings on behalf of Buckinghamshire Council.

She is the Founder and Chair of BAME Planners Network, promoting  diversity and inclusion in the planning profession. She is also an Advisory Board Member for Women in Planning and President of ICOGA Europe (Idia College alumni association). Helen has won several awards and was a judge in the RTPI London Region Awards 2021, RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence in 2020 and 2021.

Helen has been a member of the  RTPI General Assembly since 2019, RTPI Membership Panel (2016-2017), RTPI International Committee (2019), RTPI Membership and Ethics Committee (2020 to date) and was part of the International Strategy working group (2020/21).

Meeta is a chartered town planner and a UK qualified planning solicitor. She is a founding partner of Town Legal LLP, the boutique planning law firm, and before joining Town, Meeta was a planning solicitor at city law firm King and Wood Mallesons (formerly SJ Berwin) and prior to that a planning officer at Westminister Council. She has experience of dealing with a wide range of development schemes of all types and scale, up to and including urban extensions. However, her specialism is large scale mixed-use redevelopment and regeneration schemes, both in London and across the country. She regularly advises on all aspects of planning and associated issues such as highways, compulsory purchase, CIL, heritage, affordable housing and scheme viability, development plans, judicial review, planning appeals. Meeta has been involved with the RTPI at both a regional and national level for over 20 years and is a past chair of RTPI London. Meeta was vice chair of the Board of Trustees from 2021-2022 before being elected to Chair of the Board from January 2023.

Stefano is a commercial and pragmatic development planner with a strong customer focus. He has over 35 years of UK professional experience of managing multi-disciplinary teams within  planning, environmental, design and engineering consultancies. He is the Founding Director of Stefano Smith Planning – an independent planning consultancy established in 2019. He has extensive experience in providing development planning and project management services in the environment, infrastructure, energy, commercial, industrial, housing and mixed-use sectors. He has specific experience in statutory planning (including approvals & consents and expert witness), sustainability, regeneration, master planning & urban design, consultation & engagement strategies & tools, development economics and urban analytics. He is an Expert on the Westminster Government’s High Streets Task Force set-up in 2020. He has successfully advised, negotiated and delivered complex land development and infrastructure projects of a range of sizes. He has been intrinsically involved in the evolution of the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 participating in various Scottish Government workshops. He is a regular member on research & advisory panels, including Scottish Government research on the infrastructure levy (2017) and the value, impact and incidence of developer contributions (2020/2021). He has been an external practitioner on Heriot-Watt University's Final Year Planning & Property undergraduate degree course, and graduated from the University of Glasgow post graduate masters' programme in Urban Analytics (MSc Urban Analytics) in 2022.

Stefano is an RTPI Board Nations Trustee, Chair of the Nations & Regions Panel and Vice-Chair of the Policy Practice & Research Committee and member of the Nominations Sub-committee, as well as a member of the RTPI Scotland Executive Committee and past RTPI Scotland Convenor.

Tony Crook is a chartered planner and was Pro-Vice Chancellor of The University of Sheffield and is now Emeritus Professor of Town & Regional Planning.  He chairs The Conservation Volunteers and the Construction Industry Council’s Housing Panel; is a lay Privy Council appointee to the Architects Registration Board, an Academy of Social Sciences council member, a board member of the.  Royal Town Planning Institute (and chair of its Education Committee); Former roles include Deputy Chair of Orbit Housing and of the Construction Industry Council; chair of Rotherham MBC governance review, chair of Shelter Trustee Board and of Sheffield Homes Ltd; a member of the Kensington & Chelsea TMO Residuary Board and member of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, the Lloyds Banking Group Housing Commission and the Housing Commission for Northern England.

His research covers private rented housing and planning obligations.  His latest book ‘Planning Gain’: (Wiley Blackwell) won the RTPI Research Excellence Award in 2016 and, jointly with Professor Christine Whitehead he won the Sir Peter Hall award in 2020 for research on land value capture and its impact on public policy. In 2004 he was elected, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and was appointed CBE in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to housing and charitable governance..

Elle is a Chartered Town Planner who has worked predominantly within the private sector for almost 30 years.  Her career began with a short period working on the Shrewsbury and Atcham Local Plan, and has since included working for a regional planning consultancy, a national house builder, two global commercial real estate companies and as Head of Planning at SLR Consulting an international environmental consultancy. She thus has experience across a range of sectors, organisations and geographies.

Elle is currently Head of Built Environment Growth at SLR focusing not only on project delivery, but ensuring that clients have available the most comprehensive technical advice to optimise the positive environmental, social and sustainability outcomes of their proposals.  She advises a range of clients from investors, enablers, developers and charities through to the public sector, across a full spectrum of uses including tourism, leisure, housing, retail, care, education, industrial and logistics.  Elle’s passion for helping to shape the built environment and the positive outcomes which great development can deliver is supported by her regular involvement in projects from pre-acquisition due diligence, inception, design and public consultation, through to site promotion and planning, project management and site delivery.

Professor Samer Bagaeen’s breadth of experience lies across local government, academia, and urban planning. He is a Technical Director with the Environmental Planning team at Arcadis, a Professor of Planning & Resilient Systems at the University of Kent, and a Councillor since 2019.

Samer is a Chartered Town Planner, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a Design Council Expert, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a Trustee of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a Non-Exec Board Member for the South East at Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors. He is Chair of the RTPI’s International Committee in 2023 and sits on the Audit & Risk Committee. Samer sits on the Kent Housing and Development Group and advises the Kent Chief Planners Group. He is a founder member of Hydrogen Sussex and sits on the Advisory Board of the BAME Planners Network.

He previously worked with the Rockefeller Foundation’s global resilience programme as an Associate Director. In Kent, Samer currently manages Cultural Co-location, a Creative Estuary project funded by the Cultural Development Fund and his team has developed a planning for culture toolkit.

He served on the Policy Council at the Town and Country Planning Association from 2010-2020 where he also served as a Trustee for five years. Samer also worked for the RICS as an officer looking after thought leadership relationships. Samer is a regular speaker at conferences and events.

Simeon Shtebunaev is an interdisciplinary researcher in the built environment working for Social Life. Their PhD project at Birmingham City University explores how young people engage in the planning of future 'smart' cities. He was a principal investigator on the AHRC funded project “Are you game for climate action?” developing the board game Climania with young people focusing on the role of the built environment in climate change. Simeon was selected as the RIBAJ Rising Star 2021 and RTPI Young Planner of the Year 2022. He chairs the Cultural Infrastructure and Investment working group part of the WMCA Cultural Leadership Board.  

Nicky is a chartered town planner and independent planning consultant, working primarily with the public sector.  She has been involved in a wide range of projects including as a member of the Team that developed the Planning Advisory Service’s Local Plan Routemapper and Toolkit, Interim Director of Planning during the set-up phase of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, consultant planning inspector, supporting local authorities on plan-making and developing local place-based plans and a Design Council Built Environment Expert. Nicky is also the Planning Officers Society Communications Manager and acts in a voluntary capacity as the Society’s Subject Specialist on housing delivery, transport and climate change.

Before setting up her consultancy Nicky spent 25 years working in unitary and district councils including as a Chief Planning Officer.  During that time she gained a wide range of experience including in Development Management, Planning and Transport Policy, Economic Development, Masterplanning and Community Engagement.  She was also actively engaged in regional and sub-regional partnerships.

Nicky has been a member of the RTPI General Assembly, Policy and Practice Research Committee and English Policy Committee. She also chaired a national working group with representatives from a wide range of organisations with an interest in housing which produced a toolkit for assessing local housing need and co-founded a charity which operated overseas.

Robbie has undertaken a variety of roles in his early career across planning practice, policy and research work. Whilst working for the Cairngorms National Park Authority, Robbie dealt with a variety of complex and high profile planning applications in the development management team. Working for the RTPI Robbie has published a number of research reports and held a key role in influencing and shaping the Planning (Scotland) 2019 Act. through its parliamentary passage. As an active ambassador for the profession, Robbie undertakes a range of voluntary positions including in his role with Planning Aid Scotland’s Planning Advice Service.

Jack is Investment Director and Compliance Officer for Frontier Development Capital Ltd, a subsidiary of Mercia Asset Management PLC which provides venture capital, private equity and debt investment across the UK. 

He is a chartered town planner having previously worked as Assistant Director at Birmingham City Council heading up its Investment, Innovation and Business Division. Prior to that he held senior management positions in economic development roles in a number of local authorities and public agencies.

Vice Chair of the Finance Committee and member of Appointments & Remuneration Committee Jack has also been a member of the Audit and Risk Committee.

Andrew is Group Planning Director at Vistry Group which includes Bovis, Countryside and Linden Homes. Vistry develops private, affordable and privately rented homes through partnerships with landowners, registered providers, institutional investors and local authorities, with a focus on urban regeneration schemes, landscape led developments and new settlements.

Before joining Countryside/Vistry, Andrew was Head of Planning for a developer in the Eastern Counties and prior to that spent over 18 years in planning authorities in the southeast of England. He has experience of both urban and rural planning from small scale exception needs housing to master planning new settlements, major town centre redevelopments and international airport expansion.

Andrew chaired the Royal Town Planning Institute Board of Trustees for 4 years to December 2016 and was Hon. Treasurer for 6 years from January 2017. He remains a Trustee, on the RTPI’s General Assembly and is a member of the English Policy Committee.

Andrew is a member of the Home Builders Federation National Planning committee, the Policy and Technical Committee of the Land, Planning and Development Federation, a member of the Women in Planning Advisory board and Chair of the National Planning Forum’s Management Committee, championing planning and inspiring all those involved in the planning process and in delivering the new planning agenda.