Directors

Matthew Green BA

Matthew is a planning consultant with a remarkable record of success in planning appeals.  He appears regularly as an expert witness at Public Inquiries, Informal Hearings, Magistrates Court cases, Crown Court case and cases in the High Court. He has appeared at over 125 planning appeals since 2005.  His work encompasses land use, built environment and enforcement cases.

He has worked as a planning consultant since 2005. He set up Green Planning Solutions LLP in early 2006, which evolved into a partnership in April 2007.

Since working as a consultant has worked on numerous housing projects throughout England and Wales ranging from single dwellings to over 300 dwellings. He has expertise in assessing whether Councils have a five year land supply of deliverable housing land.

He also has particular expertise on the planning issues surrounding different types of caravan sites, on land uses, certificates of lawful use and on enforcement matters. One of his clients recently described Matthew as ‘the planning equivalent of that solicitor who gets everyone off their speeding fines’.

When appearing as a witness in the High Court in a planning injunction case. Brentwood Borough Council v Ball and Others [2009] EWHC 2433 (08.10.09) Stadlen J made the following observations on his experience and judgment.

“In my judgement the decisions and some of the reasons for them in the Clementines Farm Appeal support the conclusion that there is a real prospect that the Defendants’ appeal may succeed. This is a conclusion which I would have reached even without sight of those decisions. I found Mr Green to be a very experienced, well informed and balanced witness and his views on the relative weight likely to be attached by the inspector to the personal circumstances of the defendants, and the lack of alternative accommodation on the one hand and the harm to the environment and the inappropriateness of residential development in the Green Belt on the other broadly persuasive.”

In smaller public Inquiries Matthew often acts as Advocate as well as professional witness.

Between 2001 and 2005, Matthew was the Member of Parliament for Ludlow constituency.  He was appointed by Charles Kennedy MP as the Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning.  He was the only front-bencher from any party to serve the entire 18 month passage of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Matthew also led on the Housing Act 2004 and led or part led as a front bencher on two other Acts and many Statutory Instruments.

Ruth Reed, BA, DipArch, MA, PGCertEd, HonAIA, FRIAS, PPRIBA

Ruth is an architect with a career that spans public and private practice and the Planning Inspectorate.  She was the first woman president of the Royal Institute of British Architects and continues to represent the profession in planning matters.

Brought up in Shrewsbury, Ruth Reed studied architecture at the University of Sheffield where she completed a Masters in Landscape.

She set up Reed Architects in Mid-Wales in 1992, where she rapidly won a reputation for successfully gaining planning consents, often in the face of restrictive rural planning controls. becoming a fee-paid planning inspector determining built environment appeals.  Much of the practice’s work was in the self-build sector and Ruth joined and became a Director of Associated Self-Build Architects, a national network of architects in the sector promoting architecture through a variety of marketing techniques including stands at trade shows and magazine articles. In 1997 she designed and oversaw the construction of her own house using hardwood and softwood timber frames and breather-wall construction.

Her association with teaching started in 1993 with roles at the Welsh School of Architecture and also Plymouth and Bath Universities. With her extensive experience and knowledge of professional practice in a variety of business types, in 2006 she took over as Course Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in Architectural Practice at the Birmingham School of Architecture. She was given professorial status by BCU at the end of her RIBA presidency in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the profession.

Ruth was the first woman and first academic to be president of the RIBA in its 175-year history. Elected to take up office in 2009 she faced challenging economic times for the profession and oversaw organisational change at the Institute. Her policy focus was on architectural education, particularly the economic circumstances facing students, and on planning reform, for which she led the RIBA’s successful campaign for recognition of good design in the NPPF. Once her term as president finished Ruth took over chairmanship of the Planning Group and continues to represent the profession to policy-makers in this area.

In 2007 she joined Green Planning Solutions llp as a part-time Partner providing architectural and landscape consultancy support for the practice’s caseload of unusual and challenging planning cases. The Practice is developing innovative concepts of developments in sensitive rural areas and has already developed an enviable success record in winning planning appeals. In July 2013 Ruth left academe to become a full-time Director in the newly formed Green Planning Studio Ltd leading the practice’s work in the built environment.

Ruth has written 2 books:
RIBA Plan of Work 2013 – Town Planning, and
Building in Arcadia – The case for well-designed rural development

Michael Rudd BSc(Hons), MSc, LLM, PgDip Law, FGS

Michael is a barrister with a mixed practice encompassing planning, environmental, highways and administrative law and is a member of the Planning team at Kings Chambers and the Public and Human Rights team at 36 Group, London.

He is recognised in the Legal 500 as a leading junior in the area of planning and environment.

He acts for developers, government agencies, local planning authorities, residents’ groups, and private individuals.  He has extensive experience in planning, enforcement and compulsory purchase appeals for a wide range of developments, as well as in local plan examinations.

He deals with an extensive range of planning matters ranging from residential schemes to commercial and industrial projects, including retail, office, leisure, hotel, windfarms, and waste matters, and has an established practice representing gypsies, travellers, and travelling show people in both planning and criminal matters.  He also has a wider public law practice involving judicial review challenges to decisions of government and regulatory bodies.

He is particularly recognised for his specialist knowledge and experience in matters relating to mobile home parks, regularly advising on opportunities to maximise the potential for existing parks, advising on lawful development certificates and appearing at appeals and in the courts in respect of such matters.  He also advises on caravan site licensing maters and appears before both the First Tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal in licensing disputes.

Michael holds a BSc(Hons) in Geology and Physics, an MSc in Advanced Engineering Geology and a Master of Laws (LLM) in Environmental Law and Policy.  He is a member of the Planning and Environmental Bar Association and a Fellow of the Geological Society.  Before being called to the Bar he spent 14 years in the development industry providing environmental, planning and engineering advice to a wide range of international engineering and geotechnical consultancies, development agencies and government bodies and has advised on some of the most prestigious development projects in recent years, including the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Heathrow Terminal 5, the Canary Wharf Development, and many of the proposed new nuclear generating facilities and proposed waste storage facilities.