The PFR team

We have a core team based at 3 Wellington Road, Bilston, West Midlands. We work nationally and also have a team of Planning for Real (PFR) consultants who work with us on a freelance basis on different projects.

Our core Planning for Real team

Consultation event in Deptford

Margaret facilitating a pre-planning application consultation

Margaret Wilkinson MBE – Margaret has over 30 years experience of working with local people and key stakeholders, using highly visual and participative techniques. She was a founder member of the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation and remained with the Foundation for just over 20 years, becoming their most experienced community development worker. Margaret was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Honours List 2008 for her work in the field of community consultation and engagement throughout the UK. margaretw@planningforreal.org.uk

Sian Every – Sian is GreenSquareAccord’s Senior Impact & Evaluation Officer. Her previous roles include  Project and Communications Manager at RegenWM (the former Regeneration Centre Of Excellence for the West Midlands) and Advantage West Midlands. Between 2003 and 2006 Sian worked as Housing Policy Officer at CABE focusing on housing design and the Building for Life initiative. In 2013 Sian became an accredited SROI (Social Return on Investment) practitioner. sian.every@greensquareaccord.co.uk

Our Planning for Real consultants

Gill Hutchinson – Based in Leicester, Gill has over 30 years experience in community development work and of working with communities in urban, rural and coastal areas. She has extensive experience of engaging people often termed as ‘hard to reach’ or ‘seldom heard’ including asylum seekers and refugees and gypsies and travellers. Gill has worked in both the public and voluntary sectors as well as running her own consultancy company for the last 11 years, during which time she has delivered over 40 PFR exercises throughout England.

Jim Boot – Based in the South East, Jim is a sustainable development professional with 20 year’s experience in the voluntary and public sectors who brings a wide range of skills and experience to community engagement practice. Most recently Jim used PFR to develop a neighbourhood action plan with residents living in Park Wood in Maidstone which resulted in resident satisfaction with street/cleansing of parks and open spaces going from 17 per cent to 60 per cent in the space of three years.

Mario Bellinzona – Based in Turin (Italy), Mario has almost 25 years’ experience in community development work and small-scale urban regeneration in the Milan and the Turin areas working with local and school communities and specifically with young people. Mario has worked as a trainer and a facilitator with groups of councillors and city staff on urban sustainability issues and has delivered PFR exercises in Italy in cooperation with Tony Gibson, Margaret Wilkinson, and Alan Tuffs. He has used PFR to help cities and voluntary organisations prepare applications and get public and private funding for community training, action planning and placemaking.