Associate Town Planner
Location: Bristol
Salary: £50-65,000
An award-winning, employee-owned multidisciplinary practice, recently recognised for the breadth and quality of its planning work, is seeking an experienced Senior Town Planner to join its growing planning team. This role offers the opportunity to lead a varied portfolio of strategic site promotion projects, securing allocations and consents for residential-led schemes while helping to shape the next phase of the practice’s growth.
The successful candidate will lead planning inputs from strategy through to delivery, coordinating multidisciplinary teams and guiding clients through complex planning challenges. This position is ideal for an MRTPI-accredited planner with a strong commercial mindset, proven experience in complex consents, and a desire to contribute to the leadership of a collaborative, creative planning practice.
Benefits:
- Hybrid options available
- Employee ownership, with a genuine voice for everyone in the practice.
- Varied workload across sectors, scales, and geographies.
- Strong support for career development and progression.
- Pension, life assurance, professional subscriptions.
Responsibilities for the Associate Town Planner:
- Lead planning strategies for site promotion, allocations, and planning applications.
- Provide planning advice across a range of sectors and project scales, with a focus on residential-led development.
- Oversee site appraisals, feasibility assessments, and planning risk reviews.
- Manage major, multi-phase applications, including outline, detailed, and reserved matters submissions.
- Support post-consent implementation strategies.
- Take a key role in planning appeals, acting as Expert Witness or providing planning support, and liaising with Counsel.
- Lead on Local Plan examinations and contribute to Spatial Development Strategies and wider plan-making.
- Run projects day to day, including programme coordination, budgets, and multidisciplinary teams.
- Support bids, tenders, and business development, introducing new clients and building lasting relationships.
- Advise clients on planning policy, case law, and regulatory change.
- Contribute to business planning, service development, and the practice’s Planning Leads group.
- Line manage and mentor junior planners.
Skills and Qualifications for the Associate Town Planner:
- MRTPI accredited with significant experience within the UK planning system.
- Proven experience in strategic site promotion and complex planning consents.
- Strong technical planning expertise, ideally across residential-led development.
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with confidence presenting to a range of audiences.
- Strong commercial awareness and project management capabilities.
- An open, creative, and entrepreneurial mindset.
- A collaborative approach that fits an employee-owned culture.
To apply, please call Sophie on 01792 963134 or alternatively, send your CV across to sophie.ferguson@penguinrecruitment.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you!
