Conclusions and recommendations
Planning matters
1. There
is a significant risk that major Government targets for development
and regeneration will be missed because our planning system is
unable to manage either the volume or the variety of tasks it
will be asked to perform between now and 2020. This includes,
perhaps most notably, the intention to build 3 million new homes.
Wider economic well-being and delivery of the Government's environmental
priorities could well be hindered simply because the system cannot
cope. Two linked and chronic problems need to be urgently addressed
to prevent this—a drastic shortage of planning officers,
estimated to affect 46 per cent of local authority posts by 2012,
and a significant and growing skills gap among those planners
who remain within the system. (Paragraph 6)
2. Many of the conclusions
we draw and recommendations we make on how to raise both the numbers
of planners and the skills they possess offer lessons for other
sectors of the sustainable communities workforce (Paragraph 7)
3. The Minister for
Housing and the Department for Communities and Local Government
seem likely to continue to suffer from 'review-itis' until the
repeated concerns expressed and recommendations made over the
past 10 years are translated into actions that raise both the
number of people who want to be planners and the range and level
of skills they possess. (Paragraph 10)
4. We welcome the
assurance given by the Minister for Housing that the impact of
the Egan review's implementation will be measured, but we recommend
that in future the Department for Communities and Local Government
ensure as a matter of routine that proper mechanisms are in place
to follow up the accepted recommendations of reviews carried out
by it and by its predecessor, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
(Paragraph 11)
The labour gap
5. The
shortage of planners was identified as long ago as the late 1990s
but has been allowed to continue to worsen to its present condition
(Paragraph 15)
6. We recommend that
Communities and Local Government produce long-term annual assessments
and analyses of the numbers of people employed in planning and
other key sustainable communities professions and the labour shortages
currently being suffered and likely to arise. The Homes and Communities
Agency should be responsible for these surveys. (Paragraph 17)
7. We recommend that
Communities and Local Government seek to raise the general status
of the planning profession through, for example, working with
professional bodies on a co-ordinated approach to the promotion
in schools of careers in planning, consideration of a national
advertising campaign such as those conducted to fill labour gaps
in teaching, and commissioning a study of salary levels for planners
in local government, with a view to ensuring that pay reflects
skills and demand levels. (Paragraph 20)
8. It is clear that
the planning process remains in a state of post-2004 flux as the
culture shifts to encompass a greater role in spatial planning
which takes into account the centrally set targets for making
progress with applications. An adequate balance needs to be struck
to achieve a process that delivers on target but retains the commitment
to quality of skilled and dedicated planners while also achieving
a primary purpose of the planning system, which is clear, quick
and responsive service to the public whom local government exists
to serve. (Paragraph 25)
9. We urge the Government
to reconsider its rejection of Kate Barker's recommendation to
raise the status of planning within local government by making
the Chief Planning Officer a statutorily protected senior local
government official. (Paragraph 29)
10. We urge local
planning authorities, supported by the Local Government Association,
to devise and implement schemes under which graduates entering
planning departments are given a structured and mentored period
of experience in all aspects of spatial planning within the relevant
authority. (Paragraph 35)
11. A more flexible
attitude towards ages—and wages—is required within
local authorities if local government is to recruit and retain
the planners it needs. (Paragraph 36)
12. CLG must encourage
increased joint working across local governmental boundaries to
meet the needs of the planning system. It is not reasonable to
expect every local authority to be able to respond to every new
development in the skills required for 21st century planning,
nor is it cost-effective to attempt to do so. The sharing of best
practice between authorities is a responsibility of the Academy
for Sustainable Communities, and CLG should set specific targets
for such information sharing, for more joint approaches to developments
that affect contiguous areas and for overcoming inward-looking
institutional 'turf wars' between authorities which should be
focused on serving their communities. (Paragraph 37)
13. We agree that
those who possess the highest skills should be charged with delivering
the most significant development projects and that they should
be rewarded adequately for doing so. We urge the Government to
work with the Royal Town Planning Institute, as the professional
body for planners, to develop clearer job roles within the profession
for those who may deal with routine, functional planning applications
and those who fill higher-level roles that require a broader mix
of generic skills on top of the highly developed technical skills
already possessed. (Paragraph 39)
14. The increasing
use of external consultants, managed at arms length, highlights
very clearly the need for increased 'generic' commissioning and
management skills among senior public sector planners, particularly
the need to negotiate value-for-money contract rates, monitor
and manage performance, and ensure that agreed goals are achieved.
(Paragraph 43)
15. Only 25 universities
offer RTPI-accredited qualifications in planning. We recommend
that CLG fund a public sector recruitment drive targeted at those
universities to attract more of the highest-achieving graduates
and postgraduates into local government planning. (Paragraph 46)
16. We are glad that
the Government has finally accepted the need to guarantee a return
on the substantial sums being spent on its postgraduate bursary
scheme following its initial resistance to requiring students
to work in the public sector. The fact that nearly half the students
whose courses have been publicly funded have gone straight into
the private sector with no requirement to provide a public return
on their learning represents a missed opportunity to expand the
range and talent available to local government planning departments.
(Paragraph 50)
17. We recommend that
CLG explore, through the Academy for Sustainable Communities,
the potential for a conversion course for mid-life professionals
who may wish to switch careers to planning, on the model used
in teaching and the legal profession. (Paragraph 51)
18. New graduates
and postgraduates and those who might consider changing course
might find a career in planning more appealing if they understood
what it meant. Communities and Local Government and, in particular,
the Academy for Sustainable Communities should work rigorously
to eliminate the kind of jargon that acts as a barrier to understanding,
particularly in materials aimed at schools. (Paragraph 53)
The skills gap
19. The
point is that planners well versed in the techniques of their
trade need wider leadership, management and negotiation skills
if they are to shape their areas fully, using their strategic
skills to drive local regeneration. These skills need in turn
to be built on a new confidence among planners themselves in their
own power to design and follow through on a vision for their localities
following the 2004 shift towards spatial planning.
(Paragraph 56)
20. CLG
needs to provide support to those authorities that have struggled
to produce their Local Development Frameworks on time or to the
standard required by the Planning Inspectorate and to ensure in
future that any such wide-ranging shift is backed by the resources
necessary to train officers adequately in what is being required
of them. (Paragraph 65)
21. The
Government has put significant funding into Planning Delivery
Grant to local authorities. Given the skills shortages across
the planning sector, there may be a case for tying some of that
funding to raising skills levels by requiring increased training
and development opportunities among those authorities who receive
it. (Paragraph 66)
Agents for delivery
22. The
fact that the Academy for Sustainable Communities—the national
centre responsible for skills in the field—has, at a time
of substantial labour and skills shortages, reached only 3 per
cent of the sustainable communities workforce in three years'
work at a cost of more than £13 million does not appear to
match the objective set by the Egan Review of achieving a "high-profile
national focus for sustainable community skills development and
research". We recommend that CLG undertake and publish an
impact assessment of the ASC's first three years' work programme.
(Paragraph 74)
23. The
Academy has been more successful in fulfilling its role as an
identifier of skills gaps across the Sustainable Communities workforce.
We urge CLG to use the Academy's forthcoming revision of its data
on the skills gap among planners and other sustainable communities
professions to establish a detailed action plan to fill those
gaps. (Paragraph 75)
24. Professor
Roberts told us that the ASC's tasks included "establishing
meaningful and productive partnerships with all the other agencies
and organisations involved in delivery of professionals and other
people working on sustainable communities":
(Paragraph 76)
25. We
agree with what appears to be a clear implication from CLG and
the new head of the Homes and Communities Agency that the Academy
for Sustainable Communities should focus its attention more clearly
on what can be done to address shortages of personnel as well
as on improving skills. We recommend that such a shift of emphasis
be confirmed in the terms under which the ASC becomes part of
the HCA in the near future. (Paragraph 81)
26. We
believe that greater co-ordination is required of the various
agencies created in the wake of the Egan Review to improve the
performance of local planning authorities. The ASC, PAS and ATLAS
currently perform different but overlapping roles, leading to
some confusion about who, precisely, is responsible for skills
in the sector. We recommend that the Homes and Communities Agency—itself
being created to co-ordinate the different but overlapping roles
of English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation—be charged
with co-ordinating this work and establishing a single agency—in
effect a sector skills council for planning—tasked with
delivering the required number of planners with the required skills.
(Paragraph 84)
Councillors
27. We
agree with the principle that councillors should be as well informed
as they can be in order to perform their tasks freely, fairly
and properly. We profoundly disagree, however, with the idea that
compulsory training for councillors is either essential or necessary.
(Paragraph 97)
Conclusion
28. Perhaps
the most surprising, and frustrating, point to arise repeatedly
from this inquiry is the fact that labour and skills shortages
in planning are so unsurprising. They have been evident for well
over a decade but review after review, report after report, recommendation
after recommendation have not resulted in their reduction. This
must change. Without this capacity, our towns, our cities and
our economy will be threatened either by paralysis or chaotic
and under-regulated growth.
(Paragraph 98)
| 
