The UK has run out of planners. All gone. Queue if you want but you’re wasting your time. It was a comment by Jon Palmer, Head of Planning at the City of Milton Keynes that struck home with me: ‘there is a chronic shortage of planners within the industry as a whole.

Last June, I wrote a post with the above headline except it had a question mark at the end. It was absolutely right and now you can remove the question mark. Why did I predict that seven months ago?

I bet you thought this was going to be about Prince Andrew and all the shenanigans with the Spare. Not at all. This story is a real scandal. It starts about the time of the coronation of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II – God rest her – in June 1953. A week earlier, Tenzing and Hillary had conquered Mount Everest.

The only way to really Level Up is to move wealth. And moving wealth means moving people. Sorry, Mr Gove, it’s not about infrastructure or, as the French say, Grands projets. We cannot force people to move.

I hope you had a good break. To be honest it was a bit boring here without Boris and Carrie – there was just no party spirit. You may have noticed that I sent you a little holiday reading – the Blurb as I call it or the Blasted Leveling Up and Regeneration Bill.