Biography
Simon Marsh is Head of Planning Policy, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Simon is a chartered town planner and leads a team which seeks to ensure that the planning system and planning policy in England is positive for nature. He was awarded the MBE in the Birthday Honours 2013 in recognition of his work as a member of the National Planning Policy Framework practitioners’ advisory group. He is currently a member of the Department of Communities and Local Government's Planning Sounding Board and a member of Lord Matthew Taylor’s review of planning practice guidance.
He is also an advisor to A Rocha UK, a Christian conservation charity, and recently completed a sabbatical report ‘Saving Nature with Faith Communities’. He was a judge for the Royal Town Planning Institute Planning Awards 2013, and was the project manager and lead author for ‘Planning Naturally – spatial planning with nature in mind: in the UK and beyond’, a report jointly published by the RSPB, the RTPI and the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management.
Previously, Simon chaired the Greenest Planning Ever coalition of NGOs campaigning on what is now the Localism Act 2011, and the Land Use Planning Working Group of Wildlife and Countryside Link, an umbrella body for voluntary organisations.
