Gabriella Barnes

So hello, I'm Gabby. I'm based in Oxfordshire. I'm an assistant town planner and I work for Oxford City Council in Oxford City.

I'm also studying part-time at the moment doing a spatial planning master's at Oxford Brookes University through a government-funded Level 7 degree apprenticeship. So I go to work four days a week and have one day at Oxford Brookes University.

So most of my job, as I'm a bit more junior, I'm looking at the planning policy shared inbox. So whenever stakeholders or anyone in the community wants to contact us and ask us about planning issues, I will monitor the inbox, talk to the rest of the team.

And we're currently at like legal stages of our local plan, which essentially is a huge document which enables different developments to go in different places around Oxford.

So I have an influence on writing policies to look at where different housing could go, or schools, or like community centres, or parks and things like that.

And I have been looking at some boarding school accommodation policies and water quality policies.

A typical day for me would look like either working eight till four or nine till five. I have flexibility with that, which is really nice and a bit of a perfect job.

Tuesdays are my day in the office, Wednesdays would be my day at Oxford Brookes, and then the rest of the three days I work from home.

Mostly I'm just working with the rest of the team and trying to learn lots about town planning because I'm still quite new. So I work with the senior planners and the principal planners who have been working for a lot longer than me and I'm asking them to help with bigger discrete projects.

So a typical day would maybe be reaching out to a principal and asking, how are you working on the housing policies at the moment? Is there anything I can help with? Is there anything I can research and what can I do to help?

The best thing about my job I'd say is that you can have an influence on your built environment and you can see that happening.

Although it can be a bit of a slow process, you can sit and work with people that have real expertise and have different knowledge areas, whether it be housing, environment, more of like an economy or employment side of things, or whether it's like health-related issues and community stuff, and you can put that all together and work with people and have really innovative and cool ideas to see and plan your area that you live in.

The hardest part would be some people disagreeing with your decisions and also you having to really back yourself and explain to people that may not understand what town planning is or what political status your like council's in and how that works, and people sometimes coming back to you and not agreeing with your ideas or not understanding how you've got to the conclusion that you've got to.

So sometimes backing yourself can be quite difficult, but you have to believe in yourself.

So my journey would be I've always been quite interested in the environment more than building things. I really enjoyed GCSE and A-level geography, which led me to do an undergraduate degree in geography at Bristol, and I did a human geography degree.

So that looked at more how society linked with the built environment and how we're people and there's places and how that interlinks where like where your schools are, how close can you walk to it, or do you have to travel by bus or do you have to go in a car? How the environment is shaped by town planners and other bodies like the Environment Agency or the government, and that led me to then looking into different post-undergraduate studies.

And I was just scrolling on LinkedIn and I found this job saying a town planner, and it was an assistant.

But it did also say that you had to have a master's in town planning. And this is something that I didn't have.

So I just reached out to the team leader via email and I just said, I don't have one of the essential requirements. Is it worth me still applying or are there other routes?

And this led me to now doing my part-time master's. And it's also funded by the government and it's through a degree apprenticeship, which I didn't actually know existed when I was first looking.

But if I hadn't have contacted and asked I'd have never have got to where I am now. So definitely ask and definitely keep looking at what's out there.

So I'd say my school influenced me because I really liked geography.

I think throughout GCSE and A-level we did a real mix of human versus physical. So human looks at more like the social science behind things, like how people work, a bit more like environmental justice, and then physical geography is more like rivers, coasts, rocks.

That was really interesting to me and I think school tried to point you in different directions of what you could go into.

And we had a careers day in sixth form and a town planner was there and I went and sat and had an interview with the town planner and it was just quite interesting what they were saying and that it was something that sparked an interest where I was like, okay, so that's your kind of job, like you would sit and write, or you would sit and inform and try and work like build up the environment that you're working in or living in.

And that was just something that was really interesting to me. So it was just speaking to people at school, using all the resources that they share with you. And then yeah, that led me on to my undergraduate, and then that led me into my postgraduate.

And it can be hard sometimes working full-time and also then having to do a degree at the same time, but it's just about having open and honest conversations with the rest of your team and your manager and just saying when you need a bit more time or if you're struggling or asking them for their expertise 'cause they've been in the field for a long time.

My current role, I'm writing some policies towards our big local plan. And it's basically one massive, massive document that's split up into chapters of how if an application came in, it would decide where certain things could go.

Housing's a main one, and then employment and economy, so where like new offices would go, or if there was like a new lab space to look into different sciences and technologies.

I'm quite interested in the health aspect and healthy communities, so looking at whether we can have a community centre and if that can be close to shops and close to amenities and making sure everyone's in like a cohesive community.

So essentially writing a big document to ensure that the whole of Oxford can get along and it be like a friendly environmental place.

I'd just say take every opportunity that you can, speak to as many people as you can, and really like there's so many things out there that you wouldn't have heard of.

So maybe look through LinkedIn. That's a good place to look at like different jobs. Even if you're not wanting that job, it's just good to see what's out there.

Speak to your teachers, speak to older people, or like utilise when schools do like career days and yeah, just take every opportunity because you never know what would happen. Like if I didn't reach out to the team leader, I wouldn't be in this role today.