Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
MR ROBERT
UPTON AND
MS SUE
PERCY
12 MAY 2008
Q120 Chair: When you say a small
amount, how much are you thinking of?
Mr Upton: The students on postgraduate
bursaries get just over £3000 to cover their tuition fees
and a living stipend of £6000 so it comes up to about £9000
per person. I cannot remember exactly how many bursaries there
are at present but somewhere in the region of over a hundred as
I recall and they are scattered around the planning schools. A
similar effort directed towards undergraduate education I think
would yield good results.
Ms Percy: It is aimed at the full
time students and there are seven bursaries per 15 schools. It
is there to attract people coming into education and for the undergraduate
route as well I think it would be an extremely attractive offer
to actually accelerate the supply line coming through and then
into the profession.
Q121 Mr Olner: When do you first
start casting your net to try to attract somebody into the profession
of being a planner? Do you start at age 10, 12, 15, 16, 18?
Mr Upton: I think I would like
to be honest and say that we have an aspiration to do a lot more
career development than our resources currently allow us to. These
days quite a lot of the work which young people do in school on
issues around climate change or sustainability or indeed many
geography projects will point them towards that. We seek to develop
a system where there are multiple entry points. I think one of
the reasons why the planning profession has suffered in the past
was because we got to the stage where there were too few ways
of getting into professional planning unless as a young person
you make possibly a rather fortuitous choice. We encourage what
we call a mixed economy in terms of both undergraduate courses
and postgraduate courses and then the ability now to come into
the profession after graduation. Some local planning authorities
have made very good use of the existing Planning Delivery Grant
by using that to train staff they already have in service on part-time
day release courses at good planning schools—South Bank,
Westminster and others—where they can qualify within three
years, they are working while they are doing it, the local authority
knows them, they have a track record of wanting to work in local
government. That has been a really intelligent use of Planning
Delivery Grant.
Q122 John Cummings: When you spoke
about the number of bursaries, how do the number of bursaries
for prospective planners at universities compare with other similar
professions?
Mr Upton: I do not know how the
figure is calculated; it is a mystery, I think, known only to
the Communities and Local Government Department.
Q123 Chair: I think we need to ask
the Minister. The memorandum we have had from the Government does
point out that of the students on these bursaries 99% complete
their studies—which is excellent—but on graduation
36% go into local government, 34% in private planning consultancies
and the remaining students to the voluntary sector. Do you think
it is good value for the tax payers' money if only one in three
of them are actually going into the local authorities where the
need for additional planners is highest?
Mr Upton: Again I think you have
to take the long term view. I talk to a lot of planning students
in their final year and I always ask them whether they are going
to go into the public or the private sector and it tends to be
50-50. If I then ask them whether they think that at some stage
they will have a career in the other sector then again at least
half of them think that that is going to happen. First of all
it increases the total stock, so that cannot be a bad thing; secondly
there is a real possibility that some of those who go into the
private sector initially will come into the public sector later
on. There are many reasons why people do chose the private sector
for a first career. One is the perception about the range of activities
they might be involved in and the perception that in some cases
being confined to the more regulatory functions in local planning
authorities may not be very attractive. Another factor is simply
the fact that the private sector recruiters are much smarter on
their feet than the public sector. I guarantee you that in the
best planning schools the private sector will have been around
them all dealing with those postgraduate students this year and
will have made job offers. They just cream the stock. Local government
cannot do that.
Ms Percy: There are also issues
around perceived career progression and I think the students coming
off the courses sometimes perceive that their career will be accelerated
in the private sector. There is also a perception about who will
look after their professional development and their professional
careers. In local government there is a view at least by some
of the students coming off that perhaps the amount of money that
is available for their professional development is pretty tight
in local authorities and that the time and the resource to support
them on their journey are going to be quite limited.
Mr Upton: This has become an absolutely
critical issue. In terms of the development of skills and training
there is a real failure not on the supply side but on the demand
side. We put this in our evidence. We did a limited survey of
local authorities to see just how much money they had available
to support the continuing professional development of their planners
and in some cases it is a pitifully small amount. If you add to
that the situation where many of them have vacancies—for
example the city of Birmingham has now got a 30% vacancy rate—then
it becomes hard not just to find the money to train people but
the time in which to release them. In those circumstances their
professional development is severely hampered.
Q124 Chair: Do you have any suggestions
as to how that particular problem can be met?
Mr Upton: Yes, we absolutely have.
We think that the Government needs to develop its performance
management regime—either the Government itself or the National
Audit Office—so that there is a real focus on professional
development. I do not think that this just applies to the planning
profession either. I think that if it wills the end it must will
the means as well; there needs to be money feeding straight through
into the training budgets of local planning authorities. The evidence
at present is that it is not and we are particularly concerned
that when the Planning Delivery Grant is replaced by the Housing
and Planning Grant that it might get worse because it is not so
clearly directed towards improving the planning budget.
Q125 Mr Betts: Is there anything
else that can be done? The likelihood is that you are not going
to get that, are you? The move is all away from specific grants,
indeed the planning development grant is slightly unusual in that
it is a new specific grant that has been brought in. The idea
the central government is going to micro-manage local authority
finance so that it targets planning training as being an issue
for a specific grant is unrealistic, is it not?
Mr Upton: That is a matter for
government. I take the point that the trend may be away from that,
but then the Planning Delivery Grant itself bucked that trend.
If it is really necessary I think that it can be done, but at
the very least I think the performance management regimes need
to emphasise this.
Q126 Mr Betts: You have also been
critical of central government for not dealing with the problem
of a lack of culture change. Could you elaborate on that a little
bit more?
Mr Upton: When the 2004 Act came
in the Government said—and we agreed with it—that
a change in culture was as important as a change in the regime.
I acknowledge the efforts that are being made by successive ministers
and civil servants to try to influence this, but I think that
it has not happened yet. It is severely undercut by the target
regime which applies at present which puts all the emphasis on
being able to tick boxes to say that X per cent of applications
have been dealt with in Y time. There is no reference to quality
whatsoever. There is no reference to the development of the capacity
of the people undertaking those tasks. I think that as that regime
has actually got tighter it has had a pernicious effect; it has
undercut the drive towards the change of culture. What we had
all hoped to see with the 2004 Act was a move towards what in
PPS1 is called a practice of Spatial Planning which has a focus
on good quality outcomes and delivery.
Q127 Mr Betts: You do not think the
new Climate Bill is a step in the right direction then with the
emphasis on pre-application consultation—which surely is
one of the ways we can practically deal with this issue of change
of culture?
Mr Upton: Pre-application discussions
are generally an excellent idea; we strongly support that. You
do have the problem, though, that there are some local authorities
who again are so strapped for people that they find it impossible
to offer that service or only to offer it at a price.
Q128 Mr Betts: Do you not think that
your organisation has some responsibility in this culture change
because, after all, you are the professional body? Should you
not really be taking the lead on it and bringing government along
with you?
Mr Upton: I think that we have
tried as hard as we possibly can to take a lead on that and bring
the government along with us. Again we refer in here to the study
which we have been doing jointly with the Government on what is
infelicitously called Effective Practices in Spatial Planning
but it took us two years to persuade the Government to co-fund
that with us.
Q129 Mr Betts: What else should you
be doing? Presumably the content for your courses is actually
quite crucial. In the post-Egan report era there is the recognition
that planners and their skills are much changed. Twenty or 30
years ago a planner might have been someone with an eye for an
attractive development, now they are project managers in quite
a complicated process involving many other professionals. Have
you taken a lead in terms of the content of courses and how you
are developing people?
Mr Upton: Yes, we do. We do not
specify the detail of courses; we leave that to the individual
planning schools. We talk about certain educational outcomes which
the courses should achieve, and an awareness of the complexity
of planning and of the number of other players, if you like, that
are involved is a very key part of that. We certainly do our best
to make available educational support through our training courses
which encourage people to develop their skills. You are quite
right that planning has changed a great deal; this is not a new
phenomena, it has to be said, planning has been changing for a
long time and will continue to change which is why the emphasis
has to be less on a prescription that these are the skills which
we need for the next few years and more on the ability to understand
the way in which planning is developing and what the future skills
will be. We can say at present that there are really critical
issues, for example, around lack of urban design skills and that
is absolutely true. We can try to do things about that and we
are, but it will not end there. We can see in the future that
issues around climate change and the requirements of truly sustainable
development are going to be tougher still than any regime which
we are practising at present.
Q130 Mr Betts: Do you actually create
opportunities to attract young people into planning which were
probably not there 20 years ago? Planners are now at the heart
of what we are trying to do in terms of urban development, in
sustainability, tackling climate change. Planning is at the heart
of all these issues, is that not something you should be enthusing
about as an organisation and saying, "Come and join us, this
is really attractive"?
Mr Upton: I think we are. There
are some very enthusiastic people coming into play now. I would
not want to knock the older generation, some of whom have given
yeoman service. There is a highly motivated cadre of people coming
into planning now—there is no question about it—people
who understand the imperatives around climate change.
Q131 Mr Olner: Following on from
what Clive said, there is also a plethora of other organisations.
I do not know if they are your competitors or what, but you are
not the sole voice on planning. I just wonder whether you ought
to be working not in a form of competition but perhaps working
in a form of doing what we all want to see and that is more town
planners out there with the expertise.
Mr Upton: Again I think we are
not complacent, but I think that we have a track record which
shows that we are doing quite a lot. You say that we are not the
sole professional planning body; there is a part of the Royal
Institution of Chartered Surveyors which focuses on planning and
development and I do not feel any need to knock them, I would
simply note that most of their members are also our members so
I do not really see them as a competing organisation in that respect.
There are no other professional bodies dealing specifically with
planning. There are cognate bodies such as the Landscape Institute
and RIBA with whom we have good working relations. We do encourage
planning schools to consider joint courses—or at least joint
initial phases of courses—and there are courses such as
at the University of the West of England which are dually accredited
by both RIBA and us for the production of architects and town
planners. We were a founder member of the Urban Design Alliance
which has been a cross-disciplinary organisation seeking to promote
good urban design amongst all professions and beyond and we seek
to work with other organisations in terms of continuing professional
development.
Q132 Mr Olner: Can you not move that
forward and make one point of connection instead of all these
other disparate forms?
Mr Upton: I think that in terms
of recognising what is the most important professional body in
planning I do not think there is much question that we occupy
that position, and we do not occupy it jealously or selfishly.
There has been a significant increase quite recently of universities
seeking accreditation from us in this country but overseas as
well. I think that we are seen as offering a platform for initial
professional education which is genuinely valuable and highly
regarded.
Q133 John Cummings: Who are the bodies
who perceive themselves to be in competition rather than in alliance?
It is in your evidence. The RTPI states that "there is inevitably
some duplication of effort, not least because some of these bodies
perceive themselves to be in competition rather than in alliance".
Mr Upton: This is competition
in the sense only of offering educational opportunities in terms
of courses, many of which are offered commercially. The point
we were trying to make is that there is a whole range of bodies
which are in competition to the extent that they are bidding for
the marginal pound, if you like; they are out there offering opportunities
in training.
Q134 John Cummings: Is there any
reason why you are not working together?
Mr Upton: Some people make a good
deal of money out of this.
Q135 John Cummings: Including the
Royal Institute?
Mr Upton: Yes, through our commercial
partners it is a significant part of our income, otherwise it
would go on subscriptions placed upon our members.
Q136 Mr Hands: I have a question
about one of the groups, that is the new Academy for Sustainable
Communities. How have you seen that working so far? Do you think
it has been a success? Do you think it is providing value for
money? What sort of joint work are you doing with it?
Mr Upton: I do not think I am
in a position to offer the rigorous assessment which that question
seems to call for. We have worked with the Academy from the outset.
I was quite deeply involved in the working group that was set
up by what was then I think the ODPM after Sir John Egan's report
trying to establish exactly what the focus of the Academy should
be. Since the Academy has been set up we have signed the Statement
of Commitment and we have supported the Academy wherever we can.
My colleague, Sue, is consulted by the Academy with great regularity
and sits on quite a few of their working groups.
Q137 Mr Hands: There is a lot of
joint working, but in terms of value for money is it too early
to tell?
Mr Upton: I think it is important
to remember that the Academy is looking at a very wide range of
professions, not just planning. I am in a corner, if you like;
I do not feel that I have that overview.
Q138 John Cummings: In your memorandum
you indicate that the lack of time, money and employer commitment
is the single most critical factor in the overall training problem,
not a lack of supply of appropriate training. If this is the case
what do you believe the Government should be doing to improve
the uptake?
Mr Upton: I go back to the answer
I gave earlier, I am afraid, which is that I think the very least
the Government must do is to encourage or bring about performance
management regimes which recognise the need for professional staff
to continue and develop their professional education. I think
that is simply crucial. As part of the performance management
regime they should be required to make the time and the money
available to support that. If the local authorities are making
the case that they do not have sufficient resources then I think
the Government has to ask itself whether this is a case for steering
more money directly to that area.
Q139 John Cummings: Have you made
such a submission to the Government? Could you tell me what their
response has been?
Mr Upton: I think this has been
part of our consistent representations to government for a long
time. I do not think it has drawn a direct response; I think that
it is regarded as too difficult.
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