Alan has nearly 40 years’ experience of town planning and regeneration in the public and private sectors and now undertake freelance consultancy work as Alan Houghton Planning Ltd. I have led teams to develop and deliver significant and high profile planning and regeneration programmes while employed by local authorities at Salford, Hyndburn and Rochdale Councils, and as a consultant for local authorities across the north of England and Wales.I have recently been appointed as an Expert and Mentor to the High Streets Task Force.Virtually all my working experience has been within a corporate environment, whether public or privately employed. The first half of my career in local government, established a close understanding of the leadership, management, methods and culture of public sector organisations, including government, (central, local and international), regulatory statutory consultees and development agencies. I understand the tensions at play between technical, political, financial and community interests. It is the need to proactively manage these tensions which makes the values of respect, openness, collaboration, performance and creativity, essential. I have first-hand experience of successful change management within the public and private sector. At both AECOM and WYG, over a 17 year period, I led the North/North West Planning and Regeneration team/s, and was responsible for work-winning, delivery of projects, recruitment and all financial and HR matters. I sat as a member of the National Planning Board and was responsible for national, as well as regional strategy for Planning as well as integration with complementary disciplines. In this time, I acted as Project Director for a large number of major planning, infrastructure, and remediation & decommissioning commissions. As an independent consultant I have acted on behalf of local authority clients to carry out discrete and highly sensitive tasks. These have included analysis and advice on planning policy issues and problematic development proposals with political, financial, community and policy implications, as well as successful progression of a council house building programme.