Examination of Witness (Questions 60-69)
MR STUART
HYLTON, MS
LYNDA ADDISON
AND MR
LINDSAY FROST
28 APRIL 2008
Q60 Mr Betts: Can I ask whether there
is a more optimistic way? There are a lot of immediate pressures,
but in terms of the future and attracting young people into the
profession, if you are saying, "Do not come and judge somebody's
dormer window application but come and help frame a city region
and develop a sustainable community, is there not potentially
something quite exciting there and should you not encourage more
people to come into—
Mr Hylton: Can I speak from personal
experience again? My son has just entered the profession and is
now working for a planning consultancy and doing a post-grad part-time;
and he has certainly found it quite an exciting career to come
into. Despite what I say about being a Kamikaze pilot, I still
get a kick out of doing the job and I try to communicate that.
Q61 Mr Betts: You have survived so
far!
Mr Hylton: So far! I am only nineteen,
mind!
Ms Addison: I am a visiting professor
at the University of Westminster and the figures are going up
enormously, so it is reflecting exactly what you are saying. The
profession in terms of people's interest in going into the profession
is growing enormously. The courses are full.
Q62 Mr Betts: Have they been expanded
as well?
Ms Addison: There has been some
expansion, yes, correct; but question mark—we have been
through this phase before in planning. Like Stuart, I would not
want to be anything else but a planner, but we have been through
periods where courses have been full but then within a few years
they have closed down because there have not been enough people.
It is back to the cyclical issue. At the moment they are more
than full. They are overloaded and lots of people want to do it,
and the quality of people going in to planning has got better,
because that went down the pan too. It is positive, absolutely
positive.
Mr Frost: There is a new course
starting up very close to me in Brighton University this year,
which will be an enormous boon for planning authorities in my
part of the world.
Q63 Mr Hands: I have a final couple
of questions on the role of elected members and their training
and skills needs, whether you think that elected members involved
in planning—which is in itself all kinds of possible roles—whether
they definitely need training. Should training be compulsory,
or are the existing arrangements satisfactory?
Ms Addison: On behalf of the Planning
Advisory Service, we have done a lot of diagnostic work and we
have done member training across the country, and what is very
evident is that there is a tremendous desire by members to be
trained and there is a real gap in terms of training provision
so far. Most of them agree they need it because an awful lot of
members still think of the planning system as it was 10 or 15
years ago. Even when you get new members coming in to the system,
they come in to the same sort of culture because the planning
system has not changed within the authority; and then they are
re-introduced to the old system, not the new system. So it is
essential, and in my view, from our experience in doing member
training and as an ex chief planning officer, it should be compulsory.
There should be a programme, and not only just around development
control, but the need to understand the local development framework
system, because spatial planning is so different. They need to
be an active player in it, and that is what we are training them
in doing.
Q64 Mr Hands: If you made such training
compulsory, why should planning be any different from any other
set of skills that a local authority member needs, for example
licensing or doing any of the other roles? Can you get to a point
where, if you make training compulsory for members of particular
fields, those fields would inevitably expand and you would reach
a position where your members are effectively becoming more and
more like council officers and less and less like elected members?
Ms Addison: There is a real difference
in terms of planning and licensing or other areas of activity
that members get involved in. Both planning and licensing are
quasi-legal and therefore there is a need to understand the system
in a totally different way than there is in other aspects of work
within the local authority. In my experience, a number of authorities
are making planning and licensing compulsory training for members
because they believe it is so important, and it is built in to
their code of conduct, the standing orders within the local authority.
There are others that do not do that. A lot of authorities have
a very good programme of regular training and bringing members
up to date on licensing, on local development framework information,
government guidance, on these sorts of issues. Planning, even
more than licensing, engages with the public, day in and day out;
it is the most heavily customer-focused activity that the authority
does. Therefore, the members need to understand what they can
and cannot say and what the current law is, in order to talk to
the community effectively.
Q65 Mr Hands: I can see where you
are coming from, and I do not mean this disrespectfully, but as
a planning consultant you are almost bound to want to propose
there should be more training for elected members. You are saying
it is a quasi-judicial function, which of course it is, but there
are a lot of other quasi-judicial functions out there, and a lot
of other important functions of elected members where training
might be helpful, such as for example officer recruitment and
all kinds of other things. I was merely raising the point as to
whether at some point you load on so much compulsory training
that you might make becoming an elected member unattractive and
potentially time-consuming. One of the points that was made is
how difficult it is to get elected members to go on the training
courses. Obviously, if you pile more and more training courses
on, I think it will get harder and harder to get them to go.
Mr Hylton: One of the challenges
there would be to manage the time you devote to training efficiently.
You need to be very carefully focused. You are quite right about
the concerns, not so much about going native, but the pressures
on members. Simple things like trying to get committee meetings
set up can be a major challenge with their diaries being so full;
but provided the training is absolutely focused, that will help
also to get them to come along to it because they will see that
their time is being well spent.
Q66 Chair: Would you make a distinction
between members of a development control committee—who are
deciding applications where you could argue it is quasi-judicial—and
the wider membership of the council being able to understand the
local development framework? If the local development frameworks
are truly to reflect the division of elected members, whichever
group it is, how will they input to that if they do not understand
the way it works?
Ms Addison: I would agree with
that wholeheartedly, which is why I think all members need to
understand spatial planning at a generic level; and then obviously
you have got much more specific training requirements, which are
not necessarily very frequent, maybe once or twice a year on specific
issues around development control as such—but, yes, I think
all members need to understand the local development framework,
and then the cabinet or the local development framework's steering
group, which some authorities have got, need to understand in
more detail how you go through the process.
Q67 Mr Hands: How much cost benefit
analysis has been done on the merits of providing training as
a way of reducing the number of successful appeals against an
authority? Has anybody ever linked that?
Ms Addison: I am not aware of
any research on that basis. The only research that I am aware
of is that there has been an evaluation through the Planning Advisory
Service that has been done on the value of the member training
that has been carried out; and that has been very successful.
Q68 Chair: How do they measure its
success?
Ms Addison: Feedback from the
events.
Q69 Chair: So the members thought
it was worthwhile!
Ms Addison: Yes, the members thought
it was worthwhile, and the local authority has been contacted,
and the local authority thought it was worthwhile, but I am not
aware of any other evaluations being done—not linked to
appeals or anything.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed.
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