The Macclesfield Express said;

A planning firm has the foundations in place to help build gender equality. Emery Planning, located on Hobson Street, Macclesfield, has come out on top in an industry report ranking the UK’s biggest planning consultancies for the proportion of female chartered town planners employed.

More than half of the company’s professional team is female (56 per cent), more than any of the 148 UK wide consultancies that took part in the annual survey.

Emery Planning also ranked highly on gender equality at director level with more than a third of its board being women (38 per cent).

Director Caroline Payne says the firm does not have a specific policy on gender diversity. She said: “We employ based on individual merit and whether a candidate will deliver to clients and colleagues, not because of their gender. For us, gender equality is not really something we have to think about or work on, it’s an innate part of our company’s culture. Having a higher than average proportion of female planners on the team is an attractive proposition to many women in the industry as it’s a largely male dominated profession. We’re also renowned four our support of flexible working, and this has played an important role in our ability to retain women planners, in fact, to retain most of our planners.”

The company was established in 1985 by Denise and Peter Emery. They say staff turnover is low and that 61 per cent of the team have been there more than 10 years.

Caroline, who joined in 2003, added: “I love what i do and Denise and Peter’s approach to flexible working has enabled me to continue in my job whilst raising my family. Until i had my first child, i worked full time. I then moved to three days a week until both of my children were at school. Now i work four days over five. Only two of Emery Planning’s ten female consultants work a traditional nine to five, five days a week. We make it work.”