Committees

Gemma has almost 20 years experience of the town planning profession and is a Chartered Town Planner.  Gemma is currently the Chair of the Royal Town Planning Institute in the Northern Ireland region, having sat on the Committee for over 6 years she was heavily involved in a wide range of planning matters.

Gemma’s career started in Local Government with the Department of Environment  Planning Service,  where she worked in the Development Control section assessing a variety of planning applications and has a first hand understanding of the inner workings of local authority planning. After a short stint travelling the globe Gemma worked for New South Wales government in Sydney, Australia providing advice to local government authorities providing advice on their social and affordable housing policy.  On her return to Northern Ireland Gemma has spent the last 16 years working for several private sector planning consultancies, advising a range of individual and blue chip clients.  During this time Gemma  gained a wealth of experience across the residential, commercial, waste, minerals and industrial planning sectors.  Gemma is currently retained by a number of developers, commercial clients and architects to provide ongoing planning advice.

Gemma acts as an Expert Witness and has provided planning evidence in a number of high profile legal matters in the last 10 years, most recently acted for the successful Notice Party in the Belfast City Council against the Planning Appeals Commission case relating to student accommodation in Belfast.

In 2014, Jobling Planning + Environment Ltd was formed with a focus on providing sound independent commercial advice to assist with the delivery of development projects. The practice, now known as JPE Planning continues to act for a range of clients and is focused on delivering reliable planning advice to a range of clients.

Mura is a chartered urban planner and designer with over ten years’ experience working on climate, sustainability and placemaking across a range of sectors. She has worked for Transport for London, the Prince’s Foundation, Lisburn City Centre Management, Ards Borough Council, and more recently in Ulster University. Mura currently works for Urban Scale Interventions, a creative design consultancy that adopts an inclusive design-led approach to projects in urban resilience, cultural regeneration and climate proofing. She is currently completing her PhD which explores the role of design in creating urban resilience and the ability for cities and towns to adapt to change and uncertainty.

Catharine is the Community Planning Manager for Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council and is responsible for managing and facilitating collaboration between a number of statutory partners delivering services to improve the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of local people. She has been a town planner for over 30 years having previously worked in Wyre Borough Council and Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council before returning to Northern Ireland to work in the voluntary sector on planning projects with community groups. A graduate of Birmingham Polytechnic, Catharine strongly believes in the importance of involving communities in making decisions which ultimately impact on their lives.

Angus Kerr is Chief Planner & Director of Regional Planning (Department for Infrastructure) and is responsible for developing planning legislation and policy in line with Ministerial direction. Angus is a chartered Town Planner with over 24 years experience working in a wide range of planning posts across Government. Angus was most recently Project Director over 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.

Angus was RTPI NI Chair in 2020.

Emma has been a Planner for 15 years having practiced in England and Northern Ireland and is a chartered member of the RTPI. She is currently an Associate Director with Turley, based in Belfast.  Her work includes a variety of projects in the residential, regeneration, minerals and energy sectors. Her role ranges from the preparation of planning applications and supporting statements to the management of Environmental Statements and the preparation of representations to local development plans as they have emerged.

Before moving home to Northern Ireland in 2015, Emma was Senior Vice Chair for the RTPI North East Branch. She joined the Northern Ireland Committee in 2016 and was elected as Chair for the branch in November 2018.

Adam is an ambitious and passionate planning student with an interest in post-conflict regeneration who enjoys promoting the planning profession. 

Having recently completed a bachelor’s ​degree at Ulster University in “Planning, Regeneration and Development” he is continuing his studies with a Master’s in “City Planning and Design” at Queen’s University Belfast.   

Adam ​co-founded and chaired Ulster University's UPLAN Society, a student-led planning society.  Alongside his committee, he organised a successful conference in March 2020 based around the theme of “Planning for a Resilient Future”. 

He has written articles for the RTPI NI's PlaNIt newsletter and is Chair of the RTPI Northern Ireland Young Planners committee.

Despite his short career, Justin is a Spatial and Smart City Planner with a demonstrated history of diversified experience developing and implementing smart city planning tools and PlanTech along with working on major transportation, regeneration, development, and renewable energy projects. 

Justin graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 2018 with a First-Class BSc degree in Environmental Planning. During his time at undergraduate level, Justin received awards for the highest performing planning student in his second year of study and the prestigious Simon Kirk Award for the highest performing final year student.  

Justin joined AECOM’s brilliant Traffic, Transport, Streets, and Highways Planning Teams, working on major schemes across both the North and South of Ireland to great success and learning a wealth of diversified experience.   

With a significant passion to make an impact on the future of the planning profession, Justin then undertook the role of Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate, leading on a novel two-year public and private sector collaborative research project between QUB Planning and VU.CITY exploring the future of digital planning through the creation and use of 3D digital twins, City Information Modelling, emerging PlanTech, and embedding these tools within the planning process. Under Justin’s leadership, this industry based KTP project was recently graded ‘Outstanding’ across every assessment category by Innovate UK’s KTP panel; a very rare accolade, and Justin has been nominated for a ‘Future Leader’ award.  

While leading the aforementioned project, Justin also returned to education and is currently close to completing a part-time Master’s degree in Planning and Development at QUB, has co-authored a peer-reviewed academic paper due for publication in International Planning Studies, diversified his growing skillset with qualifications in UX Design, Agile Business Analyst, and has been awarded an ESRC NINE PhD studentship on Digital Planning and PlanTech to commence in October 2021 with QUB.