Rob Smith

Regional Planning Officer, St Helens Council

Smith admits that he entered planning more by accident than design, having failed to land a job after completing a geography degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. He enrolled on the one-year master of planning programme at the University of Manchester, graduating last winter.

"The masters gave me a spatial focus and more urban interest," he says. "Building plasticine communities, exploring the tourism potential of the North West coast and modelling the region's development enhanced my interest in planning."

At St Helens, Smith has worked on a study of urban housing capacity that feeds into the regional strategy. He is building up his knowledge of climate change to develop policies to cut carbon emissions. The impact of planning on health, the environment, travel and overseas approaches to spatial planning are interesting career routes, he reckons.

A highlight of his year was a trip to San Francisco on a Planning Summer School scholarship to research affordable housing strategies. "I met  American planners and got a sense of the similarities and differences between our systems," he reports.