Biography
A Chartered Town Planner, Laird has a strong and varied track record of strategic and operational roles at the European, UK-wide, regional and local levels. They include Central Government direction of English New Towns’ land assembly and development; leading the consultation process on a city development plan; co-ordinating derelict land reclamation and inner city regeneration programmes; designing a cross-sectoral strategy that saved an ex-mining village from demolition; managing a sub-regional ERDF funding programme; and chief policy advisor to the Elected Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent.
Laird’s CV also includes appointments as a strategic regional advisor on equality, diversity and inclusion and CEO of a large multicultural organisation. He is a qualified ESOL teacher, specialising in learners with low literacy skills in their native language.
After 14 years as an Associate Tutor at UCEM, Laird was appointed as a full-time Lecturer in Urban Planning in June 2024.
Appointments
Currently:
- Vice Chair of Trustees, Faiths4Change (An award-winning environmental charity, based in Merseyside.)
Previously:
- Board Member, Urban Vision North Staffordshire (2016-23)
- Member of RTPI National Education Panel (2015-16) and National Membership Panel (2009-14)
Qualifications
Memberships
Member of the academic team developing and delivering UCEM’s new MSc in Urban Planning programme. Supervising research on planning, housing, urban governance and related topics.
Engagement and consultation in the planning process as catalysts for sustainable development. Laird’s work in this field includes editing Localism Watch, a series of articles on the www.opendemocracy.net platform. These outlined and evaluated the nature and effectiveness of measures in the Localism Act 2011 that seek to deliver those objectives.
Through his long and varied experience, Laird maintains strong links with professional colleagues across and beyond the UK to identify best practice examples that can be incorporated as learning material in the modules that he teaches and the research that he supervises at UCEM.
Presentation to members of the Citizen Network on the planning process and how to make sense of and engage with it at a local community level:
https://citizen-network.org/library/knowledge-is-power-planning.html
