SoLR has been up and running for a little over 2 months and we’d like to thank you for your support and wish you a safe and happy festive period.
We now have 110 individual members from right across the UK and even a couple of international members in France and Australia, who work for over 20 client and industry organisations. We have a solid foundation for setting ambitious and fun plans for 2022 and we welcome Lynn Arthurs as our fifth board member, who will help take us forward from the last 20 months of preparation.
The start of 2022 is will be focussed on clarifying how our members can get involved with making things happen and also on the Apprenticeship, whilst we work with employers, the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure and QFI as the end point assessment organisation to ensure we are ready to start marketing and recruiting, however all of this ties in with out overarching objective of raising the profile of Land Referencing.
Welcome to Lynn Arthurs
We’re excited to announce that Lynn Arthurs has joined the SoLR Board. As a chartered geographer based in Northern Ireland, Lynn co-established the Royal Geographical Society with IBG Northern Ireland Committee.
Lynn started her Land Referencing career 21 years ago in WSP (formerly Parkman) researching land registry titles for a cross-border road scheme in Ireland, undertaking landowner site visits and collating the finer details on land rights and use of land. Now, as Associate Director and Head of Land Referencing, Lynn leads a team of 200+ Land Consultants working on a variety of infrastructure and energy projects throughout the UK and Ireland, delivering land services and bringing them through the required statutory procedures. Team effort and collaborative working in leading project delivery has always been a real motivating factor for Lynn. She has had the opportunity to work with teams delivering various statutory orders documentation such as Vesting Orders, Direction Orders, Planning Applications, Transport and Works Act Order applications, Scottish Parliamentary Bills and Highways Orders and in accordance with Environmental and Planning legislation.
Lynn is delighted to have joined the SoLR board and is really looking forward to helping establish a community for talented individuals to get to know each other, share expertise and grow our industry.
NCATI Re-Launch
The National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure (NCATI) will be providing the Land Referencer Apprenticeship training from September 2022 and Chris Simpson and Simon Harth were pleased to represent SoLR as NCATI re-launched the college in Birmingham on 7 December. This event marked NCATI becoming part of the University of Birmingham family and launched their revitalised curriculum, which includes our Level 4 Land Referencer Apprenticeship. NCATI also launched their Skills Pledge campaign, calling on industry representatives to pledge their support to the college, for example donation of equipment, supply of expert speakers and employment of apprentices. Find out more at: www.nchsr.ac.uk
Member Resources
Thank you very much to Mark Warrilow, Karen Davis, Bintou Keita and Richard Ball from HS2, Ian Fitzpatrick (NCATI) and John Myers (ESFA) for their insightful presentations for the SoLR Land Referencer Apprenticeship webinar on Fri 12 November.
This webinar was prepared to engage future apprentice employers and managers by highlighting the benefits of this route, how the recruitment and funding mechanisms work and the timeline through to launch.
The recording of the webinar is available within our membership area on our new Resources page and we also have publicly available information on our Apprenticeships page including a link to the Level 4 Land Referencer Apprenticeship Standard.
SoLR's role with regard to the Land Referencer Apprenticeship is to ensure it has a sustainable future by engaging with the industry and promoting the Standard, and to help ensure a continued career development path beyond completion. We will continue to create resources to support this. We have also started to collate employer's pledges to recruit Land Referencer apprentices in 2021. Please do get in contact if there is any way we can help: info@solr.org.uk.
Planning Act Round Table
Thanks for the input to the round table discussion on the Planning Act Consultation on 25 November. Although the questions were not directly aimed at the Land Referencing Industry, it was a good opportunity to discuss the process in relation to the Planning Act and ways in which the group thought things could be improved.
It was ultimately decided that a response would not be submitted, but the right way to go about engaging with NIPA and seeking improvement in the Planning Act would be to look to arrange a meeting with Jan Bessell, the new NIPA Board Chair. We hope for this to take place in early 2022, where we can actively promote the land referencing industry and look into ways to build a relationship between NIPA and SoLR.
Upcoming Events
One of our objectives is to act as a conduit to existing networking and CPD opportunities across our industry, so we have partnered with the Waterfront Conference Company to endorse two events in 2022, bringing a discount to our members and promoting our Society and putting Land Referencing at the centre of Infrastructure Planning. SoLR will also assist Waterfront with setting the agenda and identifying speakers for future events:
There'll be lots more to come in 2022, but until then and on behalf of Trevor, Chris, Mark, Lynn and myself, have a fantastic break and happy new year!!
Simon
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