Chair's update 2026
As I step into the role of Chair of the RTPI North West, my priority for 2026 is to help strengthen the profession, deepen our regional impact, and create a more connected planning community across the North West. But before looking ahead, I want to acknowledge our outgoing Chair, Benjamin Vickers.
Over the past year, Ben has shown exceptional dedication to the region, steering us through a period of continued change in the planning system, championing our members, and ensuring the North West remained one of the most active and outward-facing regions within the RTPI.
With that in mind, I want to outline the themes I hope to lead on during 2026.
- Advocacy for Volunteering within the Profession
Volunteering is one of the quiet engines that powers the RTPI. It is not only beneficial for the individual, but also for their employer, and by extension the wider profession.
In the North West, we have an incredibly active and talented community of planners, from public and private sectors to academia, and there is huge potential to channel this enthusiasm to promote the profession.
By championing volunteering we will:
- Strengthen the pipeline of new planners at a time when recruitment and resourcing challenges are real.
- Enhance professional development and leadership skills: allowing members to mentor, lead, engage in committees or outreach and thereby build confidence and capability. Volunteering is a great way to help build public-speaking confidence, presentation experience, networks, etc.
- Demonstrate our profession’s commitment to social value, community engagement and civic responsibility. These are values that are increasingly important in the public-and-private sector alike.
- Reaffirm the public-service ethos that underpins planning, but too often feels squeezed in times of resource constraint.
I believe that volunteering should not be seen as a something we do to boost our CVs – the benefits are far greater. Volunteering should be a defining feature of what it means to be a planner in the North West.
And I want us to encourage not only individual commitment, but institutional commitment, so that firms, planning authorities and other bodies recognise that when they support volunteering, they support their own resilience, capability and reputation.
- Building Stronger Ties with RIBA, RICS, and Other Professional Bodies
No major place-making project in the region is the work of a single discipline. From Liverpool’s waterfront to Manchester’s urban neighbourhoods, from Lancashire’s strategic employment sites to climate adaptation across Cumbria, success always comes from strong multidisciplinary collaboration.
Deepening ties with our professional partners will:
- Improve cross-professional understanding.
- Enrich our CPD offer through shared learning.
- Strengthen our collective voice on planning reform, infrastructure, design, and climate policy.
- Foster integrated thinking across design, viability, engineering, ecology, heritage, and community engagement.
This theme aims to build on the existing relationship we share with other professional bodies in the region and positions RTPI North West as a convening force across the built-environment sector.
My final message is simple: get involved. If you’d like to volunteer, support our committees, or help shape the next generation of planners, you’ll find everything you need at rtpi.org.uk/membership/volunteer/how-to-get-involved. Together, let’s make 2026 another year where the North West leads by example.
Darren Muir
RTPI NW Chair 2026
darren.muir@pegasusgroup.co.uk