The practice, and the point of it.

CivicScape draws on more than twenty-five years of planning practice. Based in Manchester and rooted in the North of England, but practising across the country, Jeremy built and led commercial development teams. That work spans public and private sector clients and complex commercial and residential schemes, and it runs on a working knowledge of how planning decisions and investment decisions depend on each other.

CivicScape begins at a moment of real change in English planning. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, returning significant planning control to combined authorities and large urban centres, and reviving elements of a system that existed two decades ago.

Does returning powers to a mayor actually let local government govern locally — or just move the same decisions to a different tier of the same system?

03 — Civic growth, not just numbers

A housing target
is not a place.

Structural reform of the planning system and structural reform of urban space are, in practice, the same project. Civic growth means creating spaces people can identify with — somewhere to live and work that is connected to its surroundings, not simply a count of units delivered. That is the standard CivicScape's advice is measured against.

Jeremy's planning work extends past commercial development. He has worked with Centrepoint in Soho on youth homelessness, and is involved in Rebuild, an initiative examining reform of both the planning system and the procurement systems that deliver new housing, particularly at levels people can actually afford. The same view runs through both: planning exists to serve people, not only development.