Overview

This event is all about the highway or street environment and creating a multi-purpose space that enhances the wellbeing of users. Within this, the topics covered will include factors affecting health and safety, appropriate traffic speeds, the needs of vulnerable users, urban design, planning challenges, and local authority needs. Presentations will be short, leaving plenty of time for structured discussion.

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Why you can't miss this event

• Excellent CPD opportunity
• Excellent networking opportunity
• Learn about the integrating of transport and placemaking
• Interactive Q & A with many experts

Who is this event for?

The event is aimed at planners, designers and practitioners. It is particularly suited to local authority staff, but also design consultants and those with practical solutions to urban space issues, for example specialist paving or green environment suppliers. It is expected to be relevant to all levels of seniority from key decision-makers to detail designers.

Schedule*

09:00 - Doors open & arrival with refreshments
09:30 - Introduction & welcome by Jonathan Emery (LIEM Chair) & Dr. Jwan Kamla (CIHT EM Chair)

Session 1: Inspiring Healthier Highways
09:45 - Public Health - Dr Linda Gibson, NTU
10:00 - Urban Context - Dr Laura Alvarez, Nottingham CC 
10:15 - Making it Green - Alex Begg, Derbyshire CC
10:30 - Panel Discussion chaired by Paul Collins, NTU

11:00 - Break

Session 2: Creating Healthier Highways
11:30 - Innovations in Wales - Phil Jones, PJA
11:45 - Active Travel - Graham Grant, ATE
12:00 - Local Authority Adoption - Becky Melluish, Lincolnshire CC
12:15 - Panel Discussion chaired by Nick Thom, UoN

12:45 - Closing remarks by Jonathan Emery & Dr. Jwan Kamla 

13:00 - Networking & Lunch

*Subject to change

Speakers

Dr Linda Gibson - Professor of Public Health, Nottingham Trent University

Linda is Professor of Global Public Health, Nottingham Trent University and has over twenty five years of experience in health promotion and working with local communities in the UK and internationally. She has worked in East Africa since 2003 running workshops on qualitative research for the British Council in Tanzania, and leading a partnership with School of Public Health, Makerere University, Uganda since 2012. Currently Linda leads and participates in several research partnerships, networks and teaching projects in Europe, East Africa (Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia) and across Africa, including the NTU Africa Middle East Network, Pan-African Mental Health Network, and the Eastern African PhD Hub. Her research focus is on health systems strengthening in low- and middle-income countries and the community health workforce in primary care.

Linda started her academic career working at Liverpool John Moore’s University affiliated to the Liverpool WHO Healthy Cities project which has been an influential international programme of work across cities around the world. Linda will talk about some of the principles underpinning the programme (eg intersectoral collaboration, partnership working, the social determinants of health), and how this has shaped health promotion and global public health practice over the last 25 years and what this means for thinking about Healthy Highways!

Becky Melhuish - Growth Manager (Planning), Lincolnshire County Council

Becky Phillips-Melhuish is the Growth Manager for Planning at Lincolnshire County Council, where she leads the team who assess planning applications on behalf of the Highway and Lead Local Flood Authority. With a career spanning nearly 15 years in local government, Becky’s background is as a highway maintenance engineer, before she moved into highways development management seven years ago.

Becky’s team are nationally recognised for their approach to delivering high quality and innovative developments, particularly in street design and SuDS. She is passionate about placemaking, sustainability and social equality.

Alex Begg - Ash Dieback Recovery Officer, Derbyshire County Council

Alex is an arboriculturist currently employed by with Derbyshire County Council. Alex’s career has been in greenspace management, commercial arboriculture, and forestry. As an operational tree officer, he develops tree planting and maintenance schemes for the urban street and rural highway. Alex’s specialism is in risk assessment of whole tree inventories but is more regularly found negotiating with individuals and urban communities who, not uncommonly, feel trees offer more compromise than benefit. 
 
Alex’s current role is managing the logistics of ash dieback and planning the mitigation of the lost trees and changing landscape.

Phil Jones - Chairman, PJA

Phil is a Chartered Engineer with over 40 years’ experience. He founded Phil Jones Associates in 2003; the PJA Group now provides services in transport planning, engineering and placemaking and employs around 140 staff, with six offices in the UK and two in Australia. His experience includes preparing transport strategies for major developments and leading street improvement and urban design projects in villages, towns and cities.

Phil has contributed to much recent UK Government thinking on walking and cycling and is now a Non-Executive Director of Active Travel England. In 2017 Phil led the production of DfT guidance on the preparation of Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans and co-authored Local Transport Note 1/20, ‘Cycle Infrastructure Design’, published by DfT in July 2020.  He also contributed to the 2022 revision of the Highway Code. In 2019-20 he chaired Task Forces for the Welsh Government on establishing a default 20mph speed limit for restricted roads and the civil enforcement of pavement parking restrictions.

Graham Grant - Director of Planning and Development, Active Travel England

Graham is Director of Planning and Development at Active Travel England.   Active travel underpins successful public transport networks, it's an important part of delivering sustainable and well designed places that are inclusive. 

He joined the agency in November 2022. Formerly Assistant Director for Transport at Newcastle City Council, Graham has 15 years’ experience working in local and regional government. At Newcastle City Council, he led a team of more than 200 people and was responsible for all aspects of transport as the lead for the highway authority. This included development, design, and implementation of both policy and projects as well as overseeing teams that were statutory consultees in the planning process.

Dr Laura Alvarez - Senior Principal Urban Design Officer, Nottingham City Council

Laura is Senior Principal Urban Design Officer at Nottingham City Council. She has extensive experience in all aspects of urban design and has lately been the main architect of Nottingham’s award-winning Design Quality Framework.  

Laura holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Nottingham and has been long-standing a member of the Design Midlands Design Review Panel, giving advice on planning applications across the region. She is East Midlands convenor of the Urban Design Group.

Paul Collins (panel chair) - Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University

Paul Collins is a Chartered Planning & Development Surveyor who was a past head of department for architecture and civil engineering at NTU. He now is an occasional part-time lecturer within the School of Architecture Design & the Built Environment, but also gives his time as a trustee to Nottingham Civic Society, Nottingham Energy Partnership and the Green Roof Organisation. He is currently an external examiner at UWE Bristol and just very recently contributed to the RICS’s response to the government’s draft NPPF. 

He has always had a keen interest in urban design and green infrastructure and was a co-editor for the 2012 edition of Building for Life 12 and a keen supporter of its latest incarnation: Building for a Healthy Life. Finally, he is a keen cyclist and allotment lover. 

Dr Nick Thom (panel chair) - Lecturer, University of Nottingham

Nick is a Lecturer at the University of Nottingham and member of the CIHT East Midlands Committee.   

Nick started as a general civil engineer with Scott Wilson in 1978, working in bridges and geotechnics before being part of the supervision team for the A180 trunk road into Grimsby. He studied for his PhD (Design of Road Foundations, 1988) at the University of Nottingham and then rejoined Scott Wilson as a Pavement Engineer, where he was involved in numerous pavement evaluation projects as well as general design consultancy. 

Since 1991 he has lectured and supervised research at the University of Nottingham while continuing to act as a consultant to Scott Wilson/URS. 

His research interests include pavement and rail track analysis and design, behaviour of pavement and track bed materials, for example cold-mix asphalt, use of geogrids and SAMIs, and vehicle energy consumption.

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Help & Support

For more information, please contact eastmidlands@ciht.org.uk.