Paul Barnard MBE
Service Director, Strategic Planning & Infrastructure - Plymouth City Council
Paul is a Chartered Town Planner and has over 30 years of experience working in Local Government. He joined Plymouth City Council in 1991 and has held a variety of planning policy, project management and senior management posts, delivering a series of service modernisation programmes.
He delivered the regeneration programme of Plymouth’s historic Barbican which won the BURA/Secretary of State’s Award for Partnership in Regeneration in 1996 and led the radical Vision for Plymouth produced by Barcelona architect David Mackay in November 2003. He oversaw the production of the Plymouth Core Strategy (the first and fastest adopted for a major English city) culminating in Plymouth winning the RTPI Silver Jubilee Cup in February 2006 - and numerous other awards recognising Plymouth’s approach to community and spatial planning. In 2016 Plymouth won the Silver Jubilee Cup for a second time, the only authority to have done so, for its Plan for Homes. It also won best local planning authority of the year in 2016. In 2019 Plymouth won the Silver Jubilee Cup for the third time for its innovative crowd funder City Change Fund.
Paul is a Planning Aid volunteer and LGA Peer. Paul has been a member of the RTPI England Policy Panel and South West Regional Management Committee. He was an Honorary Professor of Planning at the University of Plymouth, a Past Chair of the South West RTPI and Past Chair of the South West ROOM@RTPI. Paul was awarded a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Warwick in 2016 and is interested in the concept of Public Value. Paul is currently the Service Director for Strategic Planning and Infrastructure at Plymouth City Council, and is responsible for over 150 staff and a budget of around £15 Million. He is a member of the Senior Leadership Team and has a crosscutting role in delivering the single integrated strategic plan for the city – the Plymouth Plan. His remit covers not only statutory planning and building control, but also transport policy, public transport, strategic transport projects, housing delivery, low carbon, natural infrastructure, investment planning and growth. He is also responsible for overall coordination of Plymouth City Council’s £464 Million Council Capital Programme.
Paul is a member of Solace, CIH and the TCPA. He also sits on various internal and external boards, including being the Chair of the Plymouth Local Nature Partnership, the University of Plymouth MSc Planning Programme Advisory Group, and the Growth, Assets and Municipal Enterprise Transformation Programme Board. In 2015, he was awarded a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Warwick and is interested in the concept of Public Value. In 2019, he was awarded the Royal Town Planning Institute’s highest award – the Gold Medal for his work in local authority planning, and an MBE for his services to town planning in Plymouth.
