1 June 2023: Turley has announced a new Head of strategic communications, as the planning and development consultancy continues to broaden its communications and engagement advisory offer in the built environment sector.
John Davison now leads Turley’s strategic communications service across the UK and Ireland, succeeding Nick Jones, who was promoted to Senior Director last year. Both moves demonstrate the increasing significance of strategic communications to Turley’s projects and clients, and a culture of distributed leadership.
Whilst Nick will continue to champion the value of professional engagement and public affairs within Turley’s multi-service offer, John has reorganised the team into three distinct offers designed to help clients win permission for even better developments; deepen their insights into communities, shaping better places; and supporting both private and public sectors to deliver creative communications campaigns to promote exciting places, projects or their wider corporate activity.
The strategic communications team has been delivering planning communications, insight-led design, and corporate affairs projects for several years now. The intention is to deepen growth in all three of these areas, in markets across all jurisdictions of the UK and Ireland.
John will be supported by Emma Dickson who becomes Head of strategic communications north. Emma will focus on diversifying the strategic communications project pipeline across the north of England, while nurturing and adding to the team’s exceptional talent, across all regions.
Alongside these two appointments, Turley has also promoted Emily Bell to Associate Director in Bristol; and Alice Jones and Michael Jardine to Senior Consultant in London and Belfast respectively.
Turley’s strategic communications team works with clients, including housebuilders, city centre developers, strategic land promoters, and local authorities, to build mutually beneficial relationships and socialise persuasive narratives that ultimately help improve local economies.
These latest promotions demonstrate the team’s comprehensive geographical coverage which underpins Turley’s market-leading built environment communications offer. The past year has been characterised by growth with six new team members welcomed since last June. This includes Parvinder Gandham who joined the Midlands team from the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP in February; and Jonathan Collins who joined the northern team as an Associate Director in May.
Speaking about the promotions Chief Executive, Stephen Bell said: “The last year has been a really exciting one, with our strategic communications service growing at pace as our clients increasingly understand how clear project communications from the outset make delivery of their objectives more efficient.
“Our people are key to this success and these promotions are a recognition of the hard work and contribution of the team. I have every confidence the service will continue to flourish under John and Emma’s leadership.”
John Davison added: “People matter, and we’re seeing an ever-increasing demand for clear engagement and positive relationships with every level of stakeholder from local communities and businesses, to the most senior politicians and officers. Creating positive stories about our projects, reaching and connecting with the right audience at the right time ultimately helps achieve success for our clients and deliver places of value for the people who live in them. I’m honoured to be leading Turley’s strategic communications service and am excited about developing the value of our work across the UK and Ireland with our expert team.”
About Turley
Turley is a full service planning and development consultancy operating throughout the UK and Ireland, with market-leading expertise in business cases and funding, design, economics, EIA, expert witness, heritage, townscape & landscape, strategic communications and sustainability. The employee-owned company operates in major cities and growth areas from 15 offices in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, City of Derry – North West, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Reading and Southampton.
Turley provides an integrated planning and design service to both public and private sector clients across all development sectors including residential, retail, energy infrastructure, health, education, sports and stadia, hospitality and leisure, business space, minerals and mining, financial institutions and transport infrastructure.
For more information via https://www.turley.co.uk, or follow @turleyplanning on Twitter.
