Roy is currently a Planning Manager for Sport England and lead of all planning work in Essex. This includes delivering Sports England’s statutory consultee role on planning applications affecting playing fields, providing advice on a range of planning applications as a non-statutory consultee such as major residential developments and new sports facilities, responding to local plan consultations, supporting local authorities to provide an evidence base for sport through the provision of playing pitch and sports facility strategies, promoting the use of our tools and guidance including Active Design. Roy has around 26 years experience in planning including 11 years working for three local authorities and a planning consultancy.

As well as his general experience in both public and private planning practice, Roy has the following which will be specifically useful for the Essex Quality Review Panel:

• Roy was part of the steering group for the Essex Design Guide review in 2017-18 and led Sport England’s input into embedding the ‘Active Design’ theme into the guide. He has since taken a leading role in preparing Sport England’s Essex Design Guide good practice case study. Roy was also part of the Sport England project team that developed the original Active Design guidance in 2007 and has taken a leading role in its promotion in Essex since then;
• Roy is supporting Essex County Council and the districts on developing policy and guidance that promotes active environments including EPOA’s Health Impact Assessment guidance and Healthy Places advice note;
• He is working with Active Essex and partners to provide support for the delivery of Essex local delivery pilot which is seeking transformational change in relation to getting people active in Essex partly through Active Environments where projects such as a kitemark scheme for Active Design in new developments in Essex are being progressed.”

Roy has been Sport England’s planning lead for Essex for over 15 years which has allowed him to develop local knowledge and establish long term relationships with Essex based partners including local authorities, developers and sports stakeholders. More specifically, he has been involved with planning for sport and physical activity in the majority of significant residential and mixed use developments in the county over this period.