'I feel honoured to have been elected as chair by the members of TPS.  Thank you for your support and I look forward to working with you all. 

It’s not an easy time to take on the role ‒ I do not underestimate the challenges facing the profession in the current economic climate. There is a growing awareness that this is not just a short-term crisis, after which we can all return to business as usual.  Change, some of it painful, is inevitable, but this can create opportunities if we respond positively and remember some of the lessons of the last recession.

So at TPS we need to do what we can to support our members, and the profession as a whole, in a very difficult period; to ensure that skills are not lost, that transport decision-making in the age of austerity is robust and transparent, and that transport planning is valued and fostered in central and local government. 

Our profession’s special role is to bring together a wide range of disciplines. As well as transport and land use planning, today the mix includes civil engineering, psychology, economics, vehicle technology and the social changes flowing from a newly connected world.  Transport planners are at the centre of this and must play a key role in making sense of it all.

This role needs to be championed with central and local government, with the private sector, and with the world of education and research.  This will run through everything I seek to achieve, including the development of individual policy themes.

In doing so I want to fully engage with our supporting institutions but my first aim must be to reach out to TPS members, and to potential members from all sectors of the economy.  I am committed to visiting the regions and nations and will link this to a specific outcome, for example our skills and research initiative or a policy issue such as the impact of localism.  In relation to this we have just agreed the new bursary topic for 2011.

How will localism affect the planning, co-ordination and delivery of land use and transport?

This will be the subject of the main TPS September 2011 event, hopefully re-run regionally (and possibly teleconferenced).  We will build on our successful survey approach, which had a good response and an impact in the public arena.  One of its subjects will be this localism/planning theme ‒another must be skills.  On the latter my aim is to produce convincing evidence and recommendations early in 2012.

Bursaries, events, surveys ‒ this wide ranging approach should provide the basis for a substantial and considered input to government thinking, and we are already exploring the best ways of achieving this.

I hope this gives some indication what I’m hoping to achieve in the coming two years and I am happy to discuss it with you either at our events, or through the new web forum – check it out on the TPS website.  Despite the challenges, I’m looking forward to facing them with you.'