14 December 2021

PlaceChangers wins 2021 RTPI NE Chair’s Award for Planning Excellence

 
 

PlaceChangers ends the year 2021 with a series of award successes. The company had been nominated as finalist for three awards this year. This includes a nomination as Innovator of the Year at the Dynamite Awards 2021, the premier Awards for the digital sector in the North East. PlaceChangers was also runner up for a GBEA Award as 'Disrupter of the Year'. 


RTPI award success

PlaceChangers won the RTPI NE Chair’s Award at the 2021 Royal Town Planning Institute’s Awards for Planning Excellence. This year’s Chair's Award at the RTPI Awards recognised planning teams, organisations or individuals who have been innovative during the Covid 19 pandemic to deliver tasks/projects to the highest standards and continued to engage with local communities.

According to the RTPI, this year's awards highlighted "exceptional examples of how planning and planners have a positive impact on our quality of life in creating exceptional places and protecting our environment. In recognising and rewarding excellence we aim to inspire others to achieve the same high standards."

On Twitter, Joe Nugent, the outgoing Chair, noted

Congratulations on winning this year's Chairs Award. High quality submission, well deserved 👏

Sebastian Weise, Founder, said: 

"Throughout 2020/21, PlaceChangers has gone through rapid change. We are proud of the hard work put in to come up with innovative, yet easy-to-use planning tools that improve outcomes for design teams and residents. I am particularly thankful to all our amazing clients, the many individuals who have been directly or indirectly part of our success to this date. Lastly, I am thankful for this recognition received from the professional body for planners. 

Alex Moon, Co-Founder at PlaceChangers, said: 

Fantastic news for PlaceChangers. I am genuinely emotional - so much hard work has gone into this. Huge congrats to DPP Planning and congratulations to winners Durham Council SunderlandUK, LichfieldsUK, Dominic Crowley and Peter Gillan.

Working in partnership with local organisations, PlaceChangers has put the North East firmly at the forefront of planning innovations through its digital platform, a powerful toolkit to deliver map-based consultations and mainstream health impact assessments for housing projects. It's leading edge consultation tool features 3D consultations and a range of other UK-first innovations. 

The new PlaceChangers Site Insights tool provides feedback on cycling and walking access, as well as simple, benchmarked indicators for assessing an area. Here they have worked extensively with health professionals in local councils across the UK as well as representatives from Public Health England. 

The company also continues to collaborate with academic through leaders, for instance, at Northumbria University, a world-renowned centre of excellence for Building Information Management (BIM). 

Organisations mentioned

Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) is the largest professional body for town planners in the UK and Europe and represents members in over 80 countries worldwide. The Institute has been shaping planning policy and raising professional standards for over 100 years and is the only body in the UK to confer Chartered status to planners, the highest professional qualification. 

PlaceChangers is a startup focused on digital solutions for collaboration and engagement in development and regeneration projects. The PlaceChangers platform helps architects, urban planners, and developers to understand the context of new development proposals through collaboration, public engagement, and intelligent handling of location data.