We are delighted to continue our UK expansion with the opening of a Cambridge office, led by new appointments Mike Salter and Jack Gray.

Our new office will serve the fast-growing East of England region, where major investment is creating high demand for development infrastructure and transport planning solutions.

The Cambridge office, located in the CB1 district on Station Road in the city centre, comes just months after the opening of our Manchester office. We also have offices in Birmingham, Bristol, London and Reading as well as Melbourne, Australia.

Mike has been appointed Director and Jack as Senior Transport Planner. Both previously worked together at Mott MacDonald, where Mike led the transport planning team.

Backed by in-depth knowledge of the local and regional political and planning systems, Mike and Jack will provide advice on development planning, transport strategy, transport assessments and business case development. They will also utilise PJA’s wider expertise in placemaking and engineering to deliver a holistic transport offer.

Nigel Millington, Joint Managing Director at PJA, said: “Demand is high for our services in Cambridge and the East of England, where there is an abundance of new residential, commercial and public realm developments as well as significant public sector investment in cycling and walking, and public transport schemes.

“Under Mike and Jack’s leadership, our new Cambridge office is perfectly placed to offer clients our industry-leading solutions for design-led, people-friendly places. We’re delighted to have them on board.”

Mike added: “PJA is rapidly growing and has an excellent reputation, not least because of their role in shaping government transport policy.”

“Jack and I are very excited about working with such an agile and ambitious company and contributing to its success.”

“The East of England is booming and we know the patch extremely well. I personally have over 25 years’ experience in the industry, and have previously worked in transport and development-related roles for Cambridgeshire County Council, and the former East of England regional bodies.”

“We look forward to delivering high value, sustainable solutions for our clients’ transport-related projects.”

Mike and Jack are also well known outside of the transport planning world. Jack is a Team GB athlete, competing in Athletics and Cross Country, and is also a HOKA One One athlete. Mike is a keen marathon runner and cyclist and plays bass in Cambridge-based The Moses Carter Band.

The address of the PJA Cambridge office is: 50‑60 Station Road, Cambridge, CB1 2JH. 0203 965 7189.

Mike can be contacted at:  [email protected] 07762 414251

Jack can be contacted at [email protected] 07762 413850

 

We’re now a proud sponsor of Urban Design Learning – part of Urban Design London (UDL). It’s a not-for-profit organisation that helps built environment professionals and decision makers create well designed spaces and places.

Having worked with UDL for many years, we’re delighted to sponsor their National Programme. This will help them deliver talks, training events, design review services and learning resources to members outside of London.

Our chairman Phil Jones said: “We’ve really enjoyed working with UDL over many years, helping to deliver training and taking part in Design Review Panels, and we’ve seen how successful they’ve been in raising knowledge and skills across London.

“We’re delighted to help support them in widening their reach so that everyone involved in improving and developing places can benefit from their programme.’

Sue Vincent, Head of Learning at UDL, added: “We’ve seen a huge increase in demand for our learning services from outside of London over the past couple of years. This has been accelerated by Covid-19 as we’re now delivering our programmes online.

“This financial and practical support from PJA will help us deliver relevant content to as many local authorities as possible.

“The PJA team are also regular speakers at our events, providing exemplar knowledge and live examples, which is a huge bonus.”

For more information on becoming a UDL member and its London and National learning programmes, visit www.urbandesignlondon.com or email [email protected]

We’re delighted to have helped to achieve a 100% success rate for our local authority clients who applied for a share of the Government’s Future High Street Fund (FHSF).

The £830 million fund will help towns and cities transform their high streets into vibrant hubs for future generations and protect and create thousands of jobs.

Our transport and placemaking teams helped to support business case submissions for Tamworth and Winsford who both received full funding.

We also provided support to Nottingham, Great Yarmouth, and Worcester who have all received provisional offers for funding.

We would like to congratulate these towns and cities and look forward to seeing their high street improvements and helping to make them a more attractive place to live, work and visit.

Find out more about our work on the business cases here

The Government’s announcement on the successful applicants is here

For more details contact Annabel Keegan: [email protected]

A huge welcome to the 25 new members of staff who joined us during 2020 – many of whom are pictured. They take the full PJA headcount up to 80.

Our new faces have taken up roles right across the business at a variety of stages in their career paths – from graduate up to director level.

 While they have not had the most conventional start, they have adapted brilliantly and we would like to thank them for their commitment.

 

 Active Travel 

Chris Sibthorpe, Director (Manchester)

 

GIS 

Mark Wilson, Graduate Consultant (Reading)

 

Water Resources 

Paul Bacchus, Senior Engineer (Reading)

 

Transport Planning 

Lianne Brook, Senior Consultant (Birmingham)

Julio Manchon Campill Consultant (London)

Vincent Lasseaux Associate (London)

David Moores, Technical Director – Landscape (Bristol)

Wayland Pope, Strategic Projects Director (London)

Matthew O’Connor, Graduate Consultant (Birmingham)

Jack Gray, Senior Consultant (Cambridge)

 

Engineering 

Harry Prew, Graduate Geo-Environmental Consultant (Birmingham)

Emma Wood, Project Manager (Birmingham)

Amy Evans, Senior Flood Risk & Drainage Engineer (Birmingham)

Sam Goss Chartered Associate Civil Engineer (Reading)

Athanasios Irodotou, Engineer (Reading)

Nik Wooldridge, Principal Engineer (Birmingham)

Dave Woolley, Director (Birmingham)

Charlotte Smith, Principal Geo-environmental Consultant (Bristol)

Daniel Smith, Principal Engineer (Reading)

Darja Orlvoska, Engineer – S278 S38 (Birmingham)

Eugenio Toichoa, Engineer – S278 S38 (Birmingham

 

Plus: 

 

Helen Vale, Development and Bid Manager (Birmingham)

Atish Chitrakar, Graphic Designer  (Birmingham)

Mary Muscroft, Receptionist / Administrator (Reading)

Catherine Ryan, PR Consultant (Birmingham)

With the festive season in full swing, we would like to wish all our clients, colleagues and connections a very happy Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

2020 has certainly been challenging of all of us, but as a business we have also seen plenty of success and growth, and we look forward to revealing some exciting news and plans in early 2021.

A huge ‘thank you’ goes out to our fantastic team who have shown impressive commitment and resilience, and a special welcome to the 25 new staff who joined us this year. They haven’t had the most conventional of starts but have adapted brilliantly.

While we’re disappointed at not being able to treat the team to our normal Christmas knees-up, we’re delighted to be able to donate the normal party fund to two housing and homelessness charities: St Basils and Shelter UK.

St Basils is based in our hometown of Birmingham and works with young people to find and keep a home, grow their confidence, develop their skills and increase their opportunities. They accommodate nearly 500 young people a night at a cost of £5 per person.

Shelter UK is the national charity that helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness.

As a company committed to creating better, people-focussed places, homelessness is a cause close to our hearts.  We therefore also wish everyone at St Basils and Shelter, and everyone they support, the very best for Christmas and the New Year.

 

We would like to congratulate Amanda Russell for winning the Community Campaign Achievement Award 2020 from road safety charity Brake.

The award recognises her campaign for a 20mph speed limit in her home town of Faversham, Kent.

Amanda began 20’s Plenty for Faversham in 2015 following two fatalities on zebra crossings and a hit-and-run involving a child.

She and a small team of campaigners built up a strong supporter base of local people, who expressed concern about road safety across the town.

By placing a series of red dots on a map, residents showed where they felt most vulnerable. The dots were widespread across the town, demonstrating the need for an area-wide solution.

The campaigners – including local resident Tim Stonor – joined a working group with local councillors to examine how to implement the scheme, drawing on PJA’s expertise to highlight best practice.

The Town Council then commissioned PJA to develop a strategy for the town that ultimately led to the Local Highway Authority adopting a new 20mph speed limit policy.

The town-wide 20mph scheme was implemented in Autumn 2020, the first of its kind in Kent.

Funding came from the Department for Transport’s Emergency Active Travel Fund, and supporting measures were designed by PJA.

www.brake.org.uk

www.20splety.org

We are thrilled to be involved in the Eastern Sub Area Masterplan at Glan Llyn, which has scooped this year’s RTPI Cymru Award for Planning Excellence and has been shortlisted as a finalist in the RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence.

St. Modwen’s Glan Llyn is one of the UK’s largest brownfield redevelopment sites and will see the former Llanwern steelworks transformed into a new neighbourhood, delivering 4,000 new homes for Newport, Wales.

The Eastern Sub-Area Masterplan will deliver homes, public open spaces, community facilities, and new lakes. A second primary school and local centre are also proposed.

PJA is responsible for the engineering on Glan Llyn, providing strategic advice and designing highway infrastructure, drainage works, reens (ditches) Blueways (wide swales) and lakes.

For the Eastern Sub Area Masterplan we provided the drainage and flood mitigation strategy including the storage of around 400,000cum of surface water – making it one of the UK’s largest Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS).

We have also delivered one of Wales’ biggest foul water pumping stations in conjunction with Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. The largest of the six foul pumping stations measures 15 metres diameter and 12m deep.

Director Andrew Catmur said: “Congratulations to the whole team on this brilliant achievement.

“At every stage we have integrated the requirements for open space, ecological enhancement, water quality improvements and the engineering requirement to limit water flows from the site.

“We have worked closely with masterplanner Stephen George and Partners, landscape architect Pleydell Smithyman, quantity surveyor Prosurv and St. Modwen to help to deliver the very best masterplan within the many constraints of this very flat brownfield site on the edge of the Gwent Levels.”

The award entry was submitted by Savills on behalf of St Modwen Developments and Stephen George and Partners. It demonstrated the significant positive impact that planning and planners have on our quality of life, communities, economy and environment.

Judges at the virtual RTPI Cymru Award ceremony RTPI Cymru said of the scheme: “A truly inspirational collaborative project, with placemaking at its heart, providing its own sense of place and identity.”

For more details contact Andrew Catmur: [email protected]

Find out more about our Engineering division here

Phil Jones will discuss the Gear Change and LTN 1/20 policy and guidance with key figures from housebuilder Taylor Wimpey and Oxfordshire County Council on Monday 9th November, 1-2.30pm.

Phil will be joined by Irina Merryweather, Group Urban Designer at Taylor Wimpey, and Patrick Lingwood, Oxfordshire County Council’s Active Travel Lead, at the free webinar.

Called ‘A Cycling Revolution – Gear Change & LTN-1/20’, it has been organised by the Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire-Milton Keynes (BOB-MK) Urban Design Network. It will be chaired by BOB-MK Chairman and urban designer Jon Rowland.

Launched in March, the Gear Change document sets out the Government’s vision to boost cycling and walking in a bid to tackle health and environmental challenges.

LTN1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design is the accompanying guidance for developers, local authorities, and highways engineers on providing high quality, protected cycle routes and infrastructure.

Phil helped produce the guidance with cycle infrastructure expert and PJA colleague Adrian Lord.

Phil said: “In addition to providing an overview of the guidance, I’m looking forward to discussing the benefits and challenges of the new guidance with Irina and Patrick. This is set to be a really interesting webinar.”

Book your free place by emailing [email protected]. Joining instructions will be sent by email. Attendees can ask questions during the webinar.

Find out more about BOB-MK Urban Design Network here.

Our work on the trial Kings Heath Low Traffic Neighbourhood has beamed to the nation – courtesy of The One Show on the BBC!

They ran a great feature on the increasing number of LTNs across the country and their role in making streets healthier and safer.

There was plenty of reaction from residents, businesses and councillors too – both positive and negative.

We provided the concept designs and optioneering for the Kings Heath LTN.

You can watch The One Show feature on this link, starting at 03:26: https://bbc.in/3eocE7K. Registration is required.

Find out more about our LTN work here

For more details contact [email protected]

 

The Welsh Government will introduce new rules on pavement parking after taking advice from our chairman Phil Jones.

From July 2022, local authorities are set to be given extra powers enabling them to fine those who park on footways. The recommendations were made to the Government by the Welsh Pavement Parking Task Force, which Phil chaired. 

Phil simultaneously chaired a task force to introduce a new national 20mph default speed limit for the country, which ministers backed in July. 

In a statement to the Welsh Government yesterday, Lee Waters, Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, said: “Together these two initiatives have real potential to save lives and to rebalance the environment in favour of pedestrians, to create communities that put people before cars. 

“I would like to thank Phil and his panellists for all the work they have done.” 

The Task Force considered the outright ban being pursued in Scotland, which is set to take five years to implement, but felt it was ‘overly slow and complex’, preferring to enable local authorities to enforce the existing offence of obstruction. The Department for Transport is presently consulting on options for England, including both the Welsh and Scottish approaches. 

Phil added: “Pavement parking is a real issue across Britain, and poses particular danger for vulnerable people including those in wheelchairs, with pushchairs or who are blind or partially sighted. 

“It also causes costly damage to pavements – with authorities regularly receiving hefty compensation claims from people who have hurt themselves after tripping on the uneven surfaces. 

“I’m really pleased that Ministers have accepted all the recommendations in our report, which aim to make pavements safer and more appealing for pedestrians. 

“It’s also great to see Wales leading the way again, as they did by voting to introduce a 20mph default speed limit for urban areas.” 

The Welsh Pavement Parking Taskforce included representatives from the police and fire services, Federation of Small Businesses, Freight Transport Association and campaign groups including Disability Wales, Living Streets and Sustrans. 

Click here to see the report from the Welsh Pavement Parking Taskforce. 

Read more about Wales’ 20mph default speed limit here