Memorandum by the South East England Development
Agency
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The South East England Development Agency
(SEEDA) was established by the Government in April 1999 to take
the strategic lead in promoting the sustainable economic development
of the South East region of England.
1.2 SEEDA's mission is to work with its
partners to make the South East of England a World Class region,
achieving sustainable development and enhanced quality of life,
as measured by:
— environmental quality; and
— social inclusion, ensuring opportunities
and meaningful employment for all.
1.3 The SEEDA region contains 74 local authorities
and covers the county and unitary authority areas within the South
East region—Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire,
the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex.
The region includes 12 unitary authorities and 55 district / borough
councils.
1.4 SEEDA welcomes the decision by the CLG
Select Committee to seek evidence on the broader range of planning
skills required by local authority staff and elected members.
In submitting evidence to the Committee SEEDA is drawing on research
and experience gained from its South East Excellence initiative.
South East Excellence is the brand name for the Regional Centre
of Excellence for sustainable communities (RCE) in the South East
region, launched in September 2005. Its mission is to "create
opportunities to develop skills to build sustainable communities—quality
places where people want to live, work and enjoy their leisure".
South East Excellence works to support the renaissance of towns
and cities by encouraging individuals and organisations to learn
new skills. Part of its task is to bring together organisations
which want to establish methods of best practice for the built
environment.
SEEDA / South East Excellence wishes to submit
evidence on the following items identified for consideration by
the CLG Select Committee.
2. SKILLS GAPS
AND EVIDENCE
BASE
2.1 The Inquiry is timely as Local authorities
have a redefined role in the delivery of the Government's sustainable
communities agenda; a shift confirmed by the Lyons Inquiry into
Local Government and the White Papers on Strong and Prosperous
Communities and Planning for a Sustainable Future. In addition
to the existing (and substantial) local planning authority role,
the challenges of these new responsibilities and of the Government's
regional housing targets, New Growth Points and proposed Eco-Towns,
demands a new, broader set of professional skills.
2.2 In 2007 under the banner of "South
East Excellence" SEEDA commissioned research into the skills
required by local authorities and others for delivery of these
new emerging agendas1. Both reports confirm the findings of The
Egan Review, published some three years earlier and previous regional
research2, which identified the deficit in local authority staff's
technical skills and experience, but critically also revealed
important gaps in a set of generic skills for example, leadership,
strategic vision and project management. The more recent research
has also confirmed variable knowledge and experience in spatial,
scenario and infrastructural planning, and in understanding of
development and housing market finance.
Inter-relationships between agencies
2.3 Our research has clearly indicated that
the debate about skills to deliver sustainable communities cannot
be restricted to the planning profession alone. As much as planners
now need to understand the roles and contributions of agencies
identified as having a role in the planning process, these agencies
also need to be clear about the mechanisms by which they engage
in the planning and development process. Local authorities have
reported a lack of synergy between the expectations, including
financial expectations and expectations of community involvement,
of non-traditional partners in delivery such as police and PCT.
Differences in approach were also reported in terms of project
management, time/risk management, and spatial approach and more
broadly around different working definitions of quality and sustainability.
Economic analysis
2.4 In addition to the areas of skill deficit
identified in our recent research, we are also mindful of the
requirement proposed in the Government's Review of Sub-national
Economic Development and Regeneration (2007) (SNR) that local
authorities should address more effectively the needs of their
local economy through assessments of local economic wellbeing
and the development of local economic evidence bases. While the
consultation paper on the implementation of the SNR is awaited,
there is regional evidence that the ability of local authorities
to take up these responsibilities will be very limited.
2.5 As a statutory consultee for planning
purposes SEEDA is consulted on the LDFs as they emerge. SEEDA's
advice to local authorities encourages them to consult the Agency
on components of their evidence base, particularly employment
land reviews and strategic housing market assessments. Our experience
is that many local authorities are starting from a low base understanding
the evidence available and how it can be used. Few have specialists
and rely extensively on consultants with standard templates and
research reports. Such datasets do not necessarily take account
of regional priorities as identified in the Regional Economic
Strategy (RES) and the impact that the implementation of such
polices may have on the data.
3. COUNCILLOR
SKILLS AND
SUPPORT
3.1 In the current South East Excellence
Action Plan, SEEDA identifies local authority elected members
as key to the delivery of sustainable communities: "South
East Excellence will work with councillors to inspire and help
their understanding of the complex issues involved in developing
the built environment and creation of sustainable communities"3.
3.2 Research commissioned by South East
Excellence in 20074 sought to identify barriers to delivery and
as part of this evaluated the skills required by councillors involved
in major planning decisions. Two important elements identified
as potential barriers (where variability in the skills and approach
of local authority elected members may result in inconsistent
decision making and impede delivery) were:
i. Skills and attribute barriers:
— Variably quality of vision and leadership
leading to uncertainty and lack of direction in the development
process, impacting on consistent decision making.
— The variable (and often conservative)
quality of local authority legal advice and approaches concerning
"rules of engagement" between councillors and developers.
This is despite the range of guidance for local authorities available
from LGA and PAS.
ii. Technical barriers:
The research report identifies several areas
where the low knowledge base of councillors impacts on the quality
of decision making. Specific areas of concern identified are:
— Understanding the development processes
and finance.
— Understanding and interpretation
of design.
— Knowledge of sustainability principles
and how they apply to planning.
4. AGENCIES RESPONSES
4.1 The Making Places Report5 underlined
the impact of the continued shortfall of suitably qualified and
experienced built environment professionals on the quality of
advice and briefings provided by officers to councillors. SEEDA
through initiatives such as South East Excellence is working through
an influencing model with key decision makers and those leading
innovation and good practice. Our approach is to be an enabler
and only incidentally a direct deliverer but we do seek to broker
and be a catalyst for new activity. Case study examples of this
work are attached as Appendix 1.
Technical Training programmes and Resources
4.2 There are many examples of training
and advice agencies responding to the new planning agenda. Higher
Education Institutes, such as Kingston University have recently
developed masters' qualifications in planning with strong sustainability
components; the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development is
leading an industry funded project to develop a toolkit for the
UK Code for Sustainable Homes and works closely with both industry
and local authorities on a range of research and training programmes.
The region's Architecture and Built Environment Centres (ABECs)
are also developing specific support programmes for authorities,
for example the Solent Centre for Architecture + Design has a
sustainable development course (complementing an urban design
course) aimed at Council officers and members. There are also
a number of environmental not for profit organisations able to
offer advice and guidance.
4.3 The issues are more associated with
facilitating access to information on provision and giving confidence
on quality and regional specificity.
Support for Councillors
4.4 While programmes designed to induct
councillors into the planning role exist, there is very limited
national provision of learning aimed specifically at developing
the higher level understanding required by local authority elected
members to support delivery of sustainable communities, and in
particular, regional housing targets and the development requirements
of New Growth Points and proposed Eco-Towns. Only a handful of
such programmes are offered each year by IDeA, LGIU and TCPA;
some support is provided through PIPA—the Politicians in
Planning Network, managed by RTPI.
Collaboration between Agencies and Institutions
4.5 South East Excellence is working at
the regional level with other national, CLG sponsored, providers
of learning programmes: Commission for Architecture and Built
Environment (CABE), Planning Advisory Service (PAS), Advisory
Team for Large Applications (ATLAS), Improvement and Development
Agency (IDeA) and English Partnerships (EP)(The Academy for Sustainable
Communities (ASC) was also invited to participate). The agencies
were approached with a view to building collective understanding
of the capacity and support needs of the region and use this distinctive
regional intelligence to 1) target existing support most effectively
and 2) explore collaborative solutions to the barriers identified
in sections 2 and 3 above.
4.6 SEEDA strongly believes that this exercise
applied nationally could ensure benchmarking of learning provision
and has the potential to reduce resource-costly overlap in public
sector programme delivery. If then complemented by regional intelligence
and associated delivery, using the approach being brokered by
SEEDA, CLG would have a powerful mechanism to respond to regionally
distinct needs.
4.7 SEEDA is also working with CIC and RIBA
South East to build a similar collaborative approach amongst the
built environment professional institutions to establish coherent
and co-ordinated provision of CPD at the regional level, particularly
in the provision of technical knowledge and expertise in delivery
of sustainable communities. This would draw on the established
models in the East of England and the North West. Again there
remains the need for this process to be replicated at the national
level to ensure agreed standards of provision and requirements
in CPD.
5. LOCAL AUTHORITY
RESPONSES
5.1 SEEDA's research into the skills required
by local authorities found both continuing absolute shortages
of planning staff and the requirement to up-skill those currently
in work (however, the precise scale of the problem in terms of
the number of staff requiring support is still not known). In
response local authorities have changed their management systems
and internal structures to meet knowledge and skills priorities,
there are various examples of this including the formulation of
major applications development project teams and "home-growing"
junior staff. Whilst use of consultants remains a common method,
Local Planning Authorities are increasingly seeking to meet the
knowledge and skill priorities through collaborative working often
with neighbouring Local Authorities.
5.2 As with the supply side, there are many
individual examples of successful practice but what is less clear
is 1) the scale of the true skills and knowledge gaps within local
government in terms of the number of staff to be supported 2)
the extent to which demands of the new planning requirements are
part of broader Human Resource strategies within local authorities
and 3) the extent to which local government is brokering suitable
regional skills packages as a sector.
5.3 As set out in the White Paper, the Government
is committed to working to ensure coordinated support for improvement
in local government and has put Regional Improvement and Efficiency
Partnerships (RIEPs) at the heart of local arrangements for support,
with resources anticipated to support this role. This provides
a real opportunity to build on the emerging trend for collaboration
amongst local authorities. The RIEPs, in partnership with the
regional local government employer organisations, should be encouraged
to broker collaborative training and support programmes on their
members' behalf.
REFERENCES
1 Making Places: Working together for effective
delivery, (2007), and Knowledge and Skills: Priorities
and barriers to delivery of quality sustainable development of
the built environment in the South East Region, (2007), South
East Excellence
2 The demand for built environment professionals
to meet the challenge of a sustainable renaissance. A report
prepared for SEEDA by a collaborative team : University of Greenwich,
Oxford Brookes University, University of Brighton. February 2005
3 Action Plan—2007, South East Excellence
(2007)
4 Making Places: Working together for effective
delivery, (2007), South East Excellence
5 Ibid
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