As Partner in Charge of Collaborative Placemaking, Charles has been an integral figure at JTP, championing co-design processes both through our own projects and as an influential voice in the broader field of architecture and placemaking both at home and internationally. Through his passion and dedication, Charles has helped establish JTP as a recognised leader in community engagement – a legacy that will endure long after his departure.

Over nearly two decades, Charles has led JTP’s community and stakeholder engagement team and worked with an extraordinary and diverse range of places and communities. From Cornwall, where he led the Vision for Liskeard Cattle Market Charrette which gave rise to The Workshed – now a thriving creative and digital hub – to the ambitious regeneration of Beckton Gasworks in East London, formerly Europe’s largest gasworks, for St William. In Kendal, his whole-town Charrette for Kendal Futures subsequently helped unlocked £13.5 million in Local Regeneration Funding; in Maidenhead, his community planning process for the Nicholson Quarter created a new vision for the town centre and achieved over 80% popular support and unanimous planning approval; and at Bailrigg Garden Village, his innovative digital engagement programme through the Covid pandemic helped shape a landscape-led masterplan for Lancaster City Council.

His portfolio has also included Central Winchester Regeneration, Rugeley Power Station, the Calderdale Placemaking and Design Guide, and the regeneration of St Clement’s Hospital in Bow – home to London’s first Community Land Trust.

Internationally, Charles has led co-design, engagement processes in Sweden, Iceland, Ireland, Finland, India and Lombok, Indonesia. In his home community, he has led two co-design events The Big Barnes Ponder 1 & 2, which have helped transform the community and local economy, including more than doubling footfall on the High Street. He is now leading a pioneering initiative there to bring autonomous shuttles across Hammersmith Bridge.

In recent years his work on the Nicholson Quarter in Maidenhead and the Calderdale Placemaking and Design Guide both won the Stakeholder Engagement category at the Planning Awards 2022 and 2024 respectively. The Bailrigg Garden Village masterplan also won the Landscape Institute Award for Masterplanning and Urban Design in 2022. In 2009, Charles, with JTP Founder Chairman John Thompson, travelled to San Diego to pick up the global accolade for Scarborough’s Renaissance, the prestigious International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Project of the Year Award.

Beyond his project work, Charles has contributed enormously to the broader profession. He is an Academician of the Academy of Urbanism, a founding member of the Lancaster University Environment Centre’s Soils in Construction and Planning Task Force, a Trustee of rural community business charity Plunkett UK, and a Trustee of Thames Enterprise Partnership. He is also the author of 20/20 Visions: Collaborative Planning and Placemaking, published by RIBA Publishing and shortlisted for the Urban Design Group Book Award – a book that distils a lifetime of thinking about how great places are made and sustained with and for the people.

“Charles has been an integral part of JTP for nearly two decades, and his contribution to the practice and to the communities he has worked with has been immeasurable. He has led our community engagement process and taken that work to an extraordinary range of places – from Cornwall to Kendal, from Stockholm to Lombok – always with the same commitment to listening and collaborating with the communities we serve. On behalf of everyone at JTP, I want to thank Charles for his dedication, his generosity of spirit, and the lasting mark he has left on so many places and people. Whilst this marks the end of Charles’ time as Partner, we look forward to him remaining part of the JTP team as a Consultant in the future.”

– Marcus Adams, Managing Partner at JTP