Tom Ansell

Background

About Tom Ansell

I started at South Northamptonshire Council in September 2012 as an administration officer in the Development Management team. In April 2016 I was given the opportunity to become a Student Planning Officer, involved mainly with householder development, and began a Post Graduate Diploma at the University of Birmingham in Urban and Regional Planning in September 2016. I achieved a promotion to Senior Planning Officer in February 2018, and this allowed me to become involved in a wider variety of larger scale projects.I was given an opportunity to convert my diploma into a MSc, and took this up by writing my dissertation entitled 'Could Milton Keynes be built today?'. I was thrilled to achieve a merit for this piece of work.On Wednesday 17th July 2019 I was ecstatic to graduate from Birmingham University with merit, achieving a MSc in Urban and Regional Planning. I am presently a Licenciate Member of the RTPI and am making progress towards RTPI Membership.In September 2021 I achieved a secondment to Principal Planning Officer, allowing me to take on additional responsibilities such as mentoring and signing off etc, in addition to larger and more complex sites and schemes.In May 2022 this role became permanent.However, in December 2022 I decided to take a different direction and move into a planning consultant role, to take up contract work with a view of assisting LPAs fill in vacancy gaps and clear backlogs. I have now completed a near 12-month contract as a Senior Planning Officer for Buckinghamshire Council, which has been enjoyably challenging, and very rewarding as I've helped clear some of its complex backlogged applications, while providing crucial support to the busy North area team.I am presently working for Lichfield District Council as a Senior Planning Officer.All opinions expressed are my own.