Douglas G HopeDouglas G Hope has been a town and country planner for over fifty years. After graduating from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1964 with an Honours degree in Geography, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1965 before ursuing a career in town and country planning. He was elected a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute in 1970. Following employment in Doncaster, Yorkshire, he moved to Scotland in 1969 and worked with the Scottish Development Department for four years before taking up employment as Depute County Planning and Development Officer with Berwickshire County Council. At local government re-organisation in 1975, he took the position of Assistant Director of Planning and Development with Borders Regional Council and was promoted to Depute Director in 1986. He was on the Executive Committee of the Scottish Society of Directors of Planning from 1989 to 1996 and its Chairman in 1994/95. He was also a Planning Advisor to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities from 1989 to 1996. Taking early retirement in 1996, Douglas took up an appointment as a Reporter with the Scottish Office Inquiry Reporters Unit, now the Scottish Government’s Directorate for Planning and Environmental Appeals, a position he held until 2015. Douglas obtained a PhD in Cultural History at the University of Lancaster in 2015 for his doctoral research into the early outdoor movement and his book on the outdoor pioneer Thomas Arthur Leonard and the Co-operative Holidays Association was published in 2017. He continues to pursue his research interests in the outdoor movement, social history and town and country planning. Read More Read Less