Meet the 2024 Judges

John is currently employed by Hull City Council as Head of Planning.  His responsibilities include plan making, development management, enforcement, flooding, building control, urban design and archaeology. 

Prior to this, John worked for around 17 years at East Riding of Yorkshire Council where he had a combined planning and housing strategy, development and investment role.  His experience prior to that over a period of 16 years was in local government where he worked in both urban and rural authority areas largely focussed on planning policy development.

 John has been a chartered member of the Royal Town Planning Institute since 1992 and as well as being a member of the Yorkshire branch where he acted as vice chair for the last year and generally as a champion for the profession. He was also until recently a member of the RTPI Conduct and Discipline Panel where he served for the last 6 years including 3 years as vice chair of the Panel.

Will is a Chartered Town Planner (MRTPI) and is Chair for the RTPI Yorkshire region.  In his professional role Will is a Principal Planning Consultant for Atkins in Yorkshire, and is working on a pivotal railway project for the North of England. 

He is also Co-Chair for International Co-Operation for the Commonwealth Association of Planners Young Planners (CAP YP) Steering Group, and helps to represent CAP YP on the new multi-disciplinary Commonwealth Youth for Sustainable Urbanisation (CYSU) steering committee.  During 2022 Will helped to launch and progress the CYSU initiative at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda, and at COP 27 in Egypt.

Philipp has an international planning background, started off his career in Germany and Austria and worked in both the public and private sectors.

Although specialised in planning policy he is experienced in planning application work, including pre-application advice, preparing planning applications and conducting public consultation.

Having worked for North East Derbyshire District Council’s Planning Policy Team for over six years, Philipp joined DLP in November 2021. Philipp works within the Planning Team but also contributes to Strategic Planning work.

Becky is a Chartered planner and is Head of Development Services at City of York Council. Since joining City of York Council in 2018 Becky and her team have lead led on a number of large scale schemes including the York Central site which is one of the largest brownfield sites in England; located next to the city's existing retail and business core and the railway station and is 45 hectare mixed-use development site. Before joining City of York Becky worked at Wakefield Council specialising in residential developments and also led on a number of large scale schemes including the Wakefield East expansion project and Newmarket Lane development site. Communication is a key part of Becky's work ethic and is always happy to promote planning whenever the opportunity arises. The future of planning is important to Becky as she sees it has part of her role to promote planning and has recently done talks in schools to promote the planning in future generations.

Paul is a Planning Director at Lanpro Services in York.  He has been a member of the RAC and volunteer with Yorkshire Planning Aid since 1993. Paul served as the Chair for the RTPI Yorkshire Region during 2006 and between 2009 and 2020 chaired the Yorkshire Conference Series in a partnership with the two planning schools at Leeds Metropolitan and Sheffield Hallam.  Paul has been a member of the Yorkshire Regional Awards Panel since its inception.