RIAS CPD
Planning Seminar: Realising NPF4 Ambitions in Practice
Tuesday 26th May 2026, 13.00-16.30pm
Dentons, 9 Haymarket Square, Edinburgh EH3 8RY
This session will cover assets of community value, planning and placemaking processes, housing, planning and governmental policy, Issues relating to climate change and engagement with clients and communities.
Presenters include; Chris Robinson - Senior Associate, Planning and Public Law (Dentons LLP), Craig McLaren – National Planning Improvement Champion (Improvement Service), Mhairi MacKintosh & Luigi Cristofaro - Principal Consultant & Consultant Ecologist (EnviroCentre), Sheena Raeburn - Creative Director (RaeburnFarquharBowen). Chair: Zoe Black, RIAS Head of Practice.
Image: Fraser Livingstone Athron Hill, Fredrik Frendin
Part of our Practice Essentials Programme for 2026 [2/5]. Access multi-person booking discounts here: https://media.rias.org.uk/files/2024/03/22/A00B9814-C2E6-23E5-821F-3A6A7DE2AB6E.pdf. Terms and conditions apply. For speaker biographies, please see below. This event is kindly supported by Civic.
RIAS CPD
Planning Seminar: Realising NPF4 Ambitions in Practice
Tuesday 26th May 2026, 13.00-16.30pm
Speaker Biographies
Chris Robinson - Senior Associate, Planning and Public Law at Dentons LLP
Chris is a Senior Associate in Dentons' Planning and Public Law team in Glasgow.
Chris acts for a wide variety of clients, both public and private sector, providing advice on compulsory purchase, residential-led schemes, section 106 planning agreements and infrastructure agreements.
Craig McLaren – National Planning Improvement Champion, Improvement Service
Biography to be added shortly…
TBC
Biography to be added shortly…
Mhairi MacKintosh & Luigi Cristofaro, Principal Consultant & Consultant Ecologist, EnviroCentre
Biography to be added shortly…
Sheena Raeburn - Creative Director, RaeburnFarquharBowen
Sheena Raeburn is a Chartered Landscape Architect, Director / co-founder of RaeburnFarquharBowen. She provides expertise to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and is on the Register of Specialist Services for Natural Environment; she is a Design Panel member for Architecture + Design Scotland Design Forum and part-time Tutor on the Landscape Architecture Course at University of Edinburgh. She has a passion for and expertise in landscape led masterplans; green infrastructure; heritage; housing and healing environments. She brings a collaborative, considered approach with an emphasis on creating excellent places for people and wildlife to thrive, that are climate resilient and maximise the benefits of rainwater in the landscape. She has developed Biodiversity Action Plans and Landscape Management Plans and contributed to achieving BREEAM Excellent and Outstanding awards on many projects.
Sheena is an Assessor for Building with Nature, which is the UK's 1st benchmark accreditation for Green Infrastructure. One of her projects Forth Valley Hospital and Larbert Woods became the first recipient of the inaugural Building with Nature National Award at the Landscape Institute Awards 2020. She has been a speaker on Green Infrastructure & Building with Nature at the Green Cities Seminar series, the Scottish Ecological Design Association’s Annual Conference, and the Future of Housing event for Scottish Government. She is a volunteer tutor at Anthropocene Architecture School, a positively disruptive holacracy, to practically address sustainability knowledge gaps in education.
TBC
Biography to be added shortly…