Meet the Board

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 was 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).

Helen is RTPI President 2025. 

Jan Bessell has been a Fellow of RTPI since 2015 and has over 30 years’ experience as a planning professional in both the public and private sector. Jan is currently a Strategic Planning Adviser at Pinsent Masons and is a former Examining Inspector for the Planning Inspectorate.

She is immediate past Board Chair of the National Infrastructure Planning Association and volunteers for RTPI as Vice Chair of the English Policy Committee and North East Regional representative on the RTPI General Assembly and Planning Aid. 

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.

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.

Alan has over 40 years’ experience of delivering business transformation throughout a range of service organisations, including working with international banks on digital processes.

Alan has seven grandchildren and enjoys spending time with his family, as well as playing golf as often as he can.

Nick Gallent is a professor of housing and planning at University College London.  He has more than 30 years’ experience in UK planning education and research and was Head of the Bartlett School of Planning between 2011 and 2019.  Nick is a Fellow of the RTPI, RICS, and the Academy of Social Sciences.  His research is mainly focused on planning for housing and on planning in rural areas, and he is the author of a numerous books and articles on these subjects.  He has been actively involved with the Institute for a number of years, spending nearly a decade on the Partnership and Accreditation Panel (PAP) and on various university partnership boards. 

Nick chaired PAP between 2016 and 2018.  He is currently chair of the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee and a Member of Nominations Committee.

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.

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.

Catherine is a senior planner in the Northern Ireland Civil Service with 29 years of experience working in the public sector. The last 15 years she has spent working on securing the transformation of planning and local government in Northern Ireland, within the context of the devolved powers of the NI Assembly, including a key role in the making of the Planning Act 2011. She also led the introduction of community planning to Northern Ireland, developing cross-sector relationships and overseeing a significant capacity building programme.

More recently, to embed the new planning system in Northern Ireland, Catherine worked with the Welsh Government to assist with establishing regional oversight of the new local development plan system. She also project managed the Planning Engagement Partnership, collaboratively working with public, private and third sector organisations across Northern Ireland, whose report ‘Planning Your Place: Getting Involved’ was announced by the Minister in March 2022 containing recommendations on how to improve community engagement in planning and place shaping. She continues to work at the regional level on improving community engagement in the planning process, and legislative matters such as building safety, second homes and the historic environment.

Catherine is a Corporate Member of the RTPI Northern Ireland Executive Committee, and has an active role in the Residents Association where she lives in a Conservation Area. She is committed to harnessing the value of planning, to produce positive societal outcomes at local, regional and national levels. She is also enthusiastic in her pursuit of self development along with professional development, having provided a leadership workshop as part of a Women’s Mentoring Programme in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and is an active member of the ‘More To Life’ Foundation which is a global community of people committed to transforming their lives and communities through their own personal development.

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.  

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.