Senior Planner in Wetherby

Senior Planner (MRTPI) – Land, Planning and Development Consultancy

Bowcliffe Hall, Wetherby | Full-time, office-based with the option of a day at home | £45,000 to £55,000 plus bonus | Start January 2027

The opportunity

DDR & Partners is growing, and we are looking for a chartered town planner to grow with us. You will run our planning work from first instruction through to a consent that can be built, working directly with the two directors on every job, and you will shape the planning function of a young firm with a varied caseload.

This is the first planning hire in the business. Our pipeline is growing month on month, and we need a planner with the ability and ambition to take ownership of it.

About DDR & Partners

We are a land, planning and development consultancy working for landowners, farming families and SME housebuilders. We cover the whole of the UK, with Yorkshire and the North of England as our core patch. We look like a firm that has been around for generations and we operate like a start-up.

We are planning consultants, land agents and development advisers in one team, and that changes the job. We identify the opportunity, secure the consent, negotiate the deal, sell the land and often stay on with the housebuilder through reserved matters, conditions and the onward planning work. You will be involved at every stage, from the first conversation with a landowner to a site in delivery. It is a breadth of planning experience that few consultancy roles offer.

Our office is at Bowcliffe Hall, a Grade II listed country house near Wetherby that is home to a community of businesses, 28 acres of grounds and the Drivers Club. It is a good place to come to work.

What you will do

• Lead our applications from start to finish: Permission in Principle, outline and full applications for landowners, then reserved matters, discharge of conditions and non-material amendments as sites move into delivery, on residential schemes from a single plot to 150 dwellings.




• Write planning statements and supporting documents that make the case clearly and give the case officer what they need.




• Appoint and manage the consultant team on each job (architects, highways, ecology, drainage, heritage) and keep them to programme.




• Bring each application pack together and review it before submission, so that the plans, reports and statements are consistent with one another and with the strategy, and nothing is missing.




• Attend site visits, landowner meetings and officer meetings with the directors, and build the relationships with case officers that get our applications over the line.




• Work closely with our Associate Director, who runs operations and project-manages the larger instructions, on programmes and resourcing.




• Keep our clients informed at every stage, so they always know what happens next.

What you will bring

• Chartered town planner (MRTPI) with two to five years' post-chartership experience, ideally in private practice.




• A track record of securing consent on residential sites with real constraints, whether Green Belt, flood risk, highways or heritage.




• Sound planning judgement. You read a consultant's report and know whether it holds up. You read a policy and know what it means for the site in front of you.




• Clear, persuasive writing in your planning statements, and the ability to explain planning to clients who are not planners. Most of ours are farmers, families and small housebuilders.




• The organisation to run a full caseload at once, and the drive to see each application through properly.




• A full UK driving licence.

Who we are looking for

Our values are clarity, confidence, community and calibre, and we hire against them. Clarity means plain language and a client who always understands their options and the path forward. Confidence means giving an opinion rather than sitting on the fence. Community means treating every client as a relationship. Calibre means work that is right before it leaves the building.

We want someone ambitious and hard-working who wants to build a career doing this to a high standard, in a firm small enough that your work is seen, your opinion carries weight, and your development is something the directors take personally.

What we offer

• £45,000 to £55,000 depending on experience, plus a discretionary bonus.




• RTPI membership fees paid, and the training and CPD you need to develop your expertise.




• A varied caseload across Yorkshire, the North of England and the wider UK, with direct exposure to the commercial and legal side of land deals that most planning roles never see.




• A desk at Bowcliffe Hall with on-site parking and membership of the Drivers Club. The role is office-based, with the option of one day a week at home once you are settled in.




• 22 days' holiday plus bank holidays, rising to 25 after your first year, and a workplace pension.




• A January 2027 start, so you can work your notice without starting a new job the week before Christmas.

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