Examination of Witness (Questions 26-39)
MR STUART
HYLTON, MS
LYNDA ADDISON
AND MR
LINDSAY FROST
28 APRIL 2008
Q26 Chair: I know we can see your names,
but can you tell us who you are?
Mr Frost: I am Lindsay Frost,
Director of Planning and Environmental Services, Lewes District
Council in Sussex.
Mr Hylton: I am Stuart Hylton;
I am head of a joint unit which provides strategic planning services
for the Berkshire local authorities, and I am also Chairman of
the South East Region of the Planning Officers' Society.
Ms Addison: I am Lynda Addison;
I am Director of a consultancy called Addison Associates. I am
here on behalf of the Planning Officers' Society because I sit
on the management committee. I am an ex-director of planning and
transport from the London Borough of Hounslow. I am a planner.
We are all planners in that sense.
Chair: You are all from the South East.
Mr Hands: Nothing wrong with that necessarily!
Q27 Chair: You were obviously here
during Sir John's evidence, and I would like to ask each of you
to say briefly whether what Sir John said matches your experience
as planning officers.
Mr Hylton: It is struck me that
in some respects Sir John was talking about the problems that
resulted from planning process that went on some years ago—post
World War II housing estates. If we look at the development that
is going on today, the majority of housing, for example, is being
built on brownfield sites within existing communities rather than
stuck out on big fields miles away from anywhere. The development
process—he was describing the comprehensive planning that
he had aspired to—is very much along the lines of the kinds
of development plans that were produced by local authorities just
after the Second World War. If you look at something like the
City of Manchester plan back in the 1940s, there was absolutely
no shortage of vision there, both on a grand strategic scale down
to the detailed design of the houses. In that respect, the problems
he was describing were not necessarily the result of a lack of
planning so much as from a different approach to planning, which
is to some extent part of a bygone era.
Mr Frost: I would go along with
a lot of what Sir John said. I think there has been some progress
since his report in 2004, for example on project management through
the local development scheme system, and increasingly large applications
and planning performance agreements are starting to come in. I
think also there is a wider understanding in the profession of
what sustainable development means; it is not simply the physical
environment, it is also resource use, social cohesion and economic
prosperity. We are also getting a clearer idea in the profession
on some financial management, financial appraisal issues, which
particularly crop up in big, complex, mixed-use developments,
particularly where the local authority is seeking development
contributions. We need to look very carefully at the viability
of development of brownfield sites as to whether they can provide
the usual range of requirements. Those are areas where I think
there is progress. There are some difficult areas, and Sir John
mentioned several. The ones I would add are the leadership role,
which is proving very difficult in terms of local authorities
and local authority partners producing visions of the sort of
place they want to be in 15 or 20 years' time. It is very easy,
in my experience, for that sort of work to be hijacked by the
very simple "no" message that one can get from campaigning
groups. The sort of breakthrough thinking that was discussed in
the Egan report—where we are thinking out of the box—is
getting difficult with the sort of tick-box mentality there is
in the local development framework process, reinforced by the
tests of soundness when you get to an examination. I think that
is making creativity in planning harder, as there is a sort of
audit/accountancy mentality that is there. I think that upskilling
staff in terms of the generic skills that Sir John is advocating
is very difficult in terms of the target culture; it is very much
a nose to the grindstone approach—churn the stuff out, hit
the targets—and also there are resource problems in many
local authorities, to some extent met by Planning Delivery Grant—but
that is variable and unpredictable and does not allow you to plan
long-term. The new Housing and Planning Delivery Grant will be
even more problematic, particularly as it looks as though we are
entering a period where the housing market may not be as active
as it has been in the past. Most of all, the area where difficulties
are coming is that despite some of the advances that have been
made on the supply side in terms of bursaries and training to
bring more people into the profession, the demand requirements
of the planning system are increasing, and the gap, if anything,
is widening. Part of that is a fairly unstable policy and legislative
background; we are having yet another review of the planning system
after several bites over recent years. I think that the perpetual
atmosphere of reform does make progress on some of the delivery
of sustainable development objectives a bit more difficult.
Ms Addison: I think there has
been significant progress on some of the aspects that Sir John
Egan talked about in terms of the issue around vision and building
sustainable communities in the context of the local development
framework process. I think that also has moved on. However, because
it has moved on, I think it has left real skills gaps with local
authorities. One of the pieces of work me and my colleagues have
been doing on behalf of the Planning Advisory Service is doing
what is called a diagnostic of local authorities. We have done
over 80 local authorities now, looking at how they are doing their
local development framework process, which is about the vision
process, et cetera. I can confirm that we found, as part
of that concern in that work, that the generic skills are missing.
They are required and they are missing. We have listed them in
the POS submission. Also, there are significant technical skills
missing in the work that we did as well. There is not very much
progress being made in helping those authorities to develop skills,
but it is starting to come into play through work like the Academy
for Sustainable Communities, and also the Planning Advisory Service;
but there is a lead-in time, and it is a very slow process. Then
you have to get those officers and the members—who I will
come back to—to attend the training session, which is voluntary—and
absorb it and use it. There is a long process time leading in
to that. Progress has been made but there are still enormous gaps.
Lindsay is right: the gap is getting bigger, and it will get bigger.
It is being reinforced because of perfectly valid and appropriate
changes to the planning system, but that means a lot of cultural
and skill behaviour change, which is going to be very slow to
implement. I think that the Academy of Sustainable Communities
is now starting to do some of the right work but, again, it is
a long lead-in time, so it is not starting to deliver at the moment.
There is further to go.
Q28 Mr Betts: Is the immediate problem
quality or quantity?
Ms Addison: In terms of skill,
I think it is both. If we do not have within the profession, and
it is not just the profession, in the whole area because, as our
evidence has said, and the Planning Advisory Service, this is
not just planners having these skills; this is the wider environmental
community having these skills—the private sector and the
other agencies that one has to deal with. They all need the skills.
It is a problem of the skills not being present, both generic
and technical, but also the quantity not being there as well:
it is both—given the scale of demand.
Q29 Mr Betts: There is a problem,
is there not, with this? It was explained to us about the age
profile—there are many people about to retire and there
is not much in the middle.
Mr Hylton: There was a report
published last week which said that two-thirds of local government
employees generally were over forty, and a third of them were
due to retire within the next 10 years, and with the demographic
generally there is a time bomb in terms of skills building up,
which will only compound the problem we have got at the moment.
Ms Addison: If you put that in
the context of the demand for the skills that was in the Arup
Report for the Academy, you have this major problem growing. There
is a time issue.
Q30 Mr Betts: What are authorities
doing to cope, given the ideal solution, which would be lots of
highly qualified, newly trained and experienced people, which
is—
Mr Hylton: It is a variety of
things. They can try and de-skill the jobs in some cases, and
this can potentially solve problems in the short term but can
lead to other problems such as a lack of creativity and the good
design and negotiation skills. They can grow their own.
Q31 Chair: Can you explain that?
How can you solve a problem by de-skilling?
Mr Hylton: In the same way that
Henry Ford solved the problem of building cars, by breaking it
down into very simple components and pursuing it with more of
a tick-box approach. It is a way of processing applications more
efficiently. The point I was making is that you can have associated
problems with it in terms of the negotiation and design skills
that can go into it.
Mr Frost: It is essentially less
skilled, less experienced people doing the simpler applications,
and using your more skilled, more experienced people to do the
more complex things.
Q32 Mr Betts: Are there other ways
that authorities are trying to cope?
Ms Addison: There is a major problem
in most local authorities that they are short of resources and
overloaded with work, which means that they do not have the time
to get people to get to the training that they need to do and
then start to use it. The other thing they are trying to do is
grow their own: they are training up people who have come through
this process of bringing in non-qualified people to do basic work,
which is fine. Growing their own is one of the ways they are doing
it. They are also trying to make better use of other skills—not
planner skills—for doing some of the work; and they are
also trying to work with their neighbours, adjacent authorities
or groupings of authorities, in order to put fewer resources into
doing work across boundaries, which in principle is extremely
good. However, having been party to some of the work they are
trying to do in some local authorities on behalf of the Planning
Advisory Service—the collaborative work—it is quite
time-consuming and it needs particular skills in terms of conflict
resolution, partnership development, getting over political issues
as well as officer issues. That demands different negotiation
skills than you might have had if you were just trying to do things
in-house. That is one of the other ways that authorities try to
deal with a basic shortage of skills.
Q33 John Cummings: Are there examples
of local authorities coming together to provide these sorts of
educational courses to assist each other?
Ms Addison: Yes.
Q34 John Cummings: Are they successful?
Is it national?
Ms Addison: There are groups of
authorities that are getting together to work together.
Q35 John Cummings: You say they are
getting together: are there any examples where such an exercise
has been carried out over a number of years? According to your
comments this afternoon, this is not a problem that has suddenly
descended upon us; it has been there for a number of years.
Ms Addison: The current examples
I can give you at the present moment are Hampshire getting together
to try and work on looking at IT in planning. They are—
Q36 John Cummings: You say—
Ms Addison: Sorry, am I missing
the point?
Q37 Chair: Yes. John is asking whether
you have any specific examples where authorities have already
been working in partnership so that one could see whether it worked
or not, as opposed to people deciding to do it.
Ms Addison: Hampshire has.
Q38 Chair: How long, roughly?
Ms Addison: For at least two or
three, if not three years. Also, a group of authorities in Norfolk
have. They have been working together on a whole series of things
probably for at least three years. There are groups of authorities
in London that work together, for example when I was Director
of Planning and Transport—so we are talking rather a long
time ago, at least 15 years ago when the authorities in West London
were working together to do joint work, and they are now doing
also in other authorities in parts of London. Those are just some
of the examples I could give you, so it is happening, I am sure.
Mr Hylton: I am a living example
of it! For the last 10 years the Berkshire local authorities have
worked together to provide strategic planning. That is included—
Q39 Chair: For those Members who
are not necessarily familiar with Berkshire; Berkshire is entirely
unitary.
Mr Hylton: Yes.
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