From Sim City to the CIH board: My journey from town planning to housing advocacy

My journey into housing — and becoming a board member of CIH — didn’t follow a typical path. I didn’t start out in housing. I’m a town planner by background. But for me, planning and housing have always been two sides of the same coin. Good places start with good homes, and the two can’t be separated.

So, how did I get into planning in the first place? Well… it all started with Lego and Sim City.

As a kid, I was obsessed with building things and exploring places. Sim City totally captured my imagination. I didn’t know what a town planner was in the early 90s, but I did know I loved building cities on my computer and thinking about how everything connected — roads, houses, schools, parks. 

Fast forward to 1994 — I was in school, and our careers teacher asked us to look into jobs that might relate to our favourite subjects. Mine was geography (still is, to be honest). I put together a list of career options that included everything from geography teacher to geologist to travel agent. It was an interesting mix, but somehow my teacher picked up on something and suggested town planning might be something for me to consider.

That was a real lightbulb moment. I chatted to my uncle, who happened to work with planners, and suddenly this abstract idea became real. Town planners existed — in Northern Ireland! I was instantly hooked.

After finishing my GCSEs, I moved schools for A Levels with one clear goal in mind: get into Queen’s University Belfast to study planning. And in 1997, that’s exactly what I did. Dream achieved.

Since then, I’ve been lucky to work in both the public and private sectors. Most of my career has been at Turley, where I’ve now been for over 20 years. Four years ago, I stepped into the role of leading our planning team in Northern Ireland — a brilliant team doing meaningful work across a range of sectors including securing planning permission for all our housing clients and helping to deliver on the Social Housing Development Programme.

So where does CIH come in? Over the years, I’ve seen just how deeply planning and housing are connected. Every home — whether it’s social housing, private rented, or owner-occupied — starts with a planning application. The things planners think about aren’t that different from what housing professionals care about: is the design high quality? Is the neighbourhood safe and inclusive? Are there good public spaces? Will this community thrive?

Right now, we’re facing a serious housing crisis. There are so many people who need homes, and the challenges we face are only growing more complex. Planning can’t fix everything on its own — but neither can housing. We need to work together, across professions, to find real, long-term solutions.

That’s why I joined CIH. I wanted to be part of the conversation — to help bridge the gap between planning and housing, and to bring a planning voice into the world of housing. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about creating great places where people can live well.