Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
PROFESSOR PETER
ROBERTS OBE, DR
GILL TAYLOR
AND MR
KEVIN MURRAY
19 MAY 2008
Q180 John Cummings: Could you tell
the Committee why your website does not contain a business plan?
Professor Roberts: I am sorry.
Can I refer that to our Chief Executive.
Dr Taylor: I am astounded actually
because we have just completed the business plan for next year
but it has not been to ministers yet.
Q181 John Cummings: What about the
present business plan?
Dr Taylor: This is the present
business plan we are talking about because we are now in May,
but until that has been signed off by Iain Wright we are not able
to put that on our website. In terms of previous ones, if they
have been taken off already, I am surprised. We have consulted
extensively with our partners and stakeholders in terms of building
up the new business plan.
Q182 John Cummings: Obviously Sir
John Egan wanted the ASC to work with education providers, employers,
professional institutions, skills councils, regional centres of
excellence and other skilled bodies to promote excellence in sustainable
communities skill development. As a small organisation with a
limited budget, to what extent can you achieve these goals that
Egan has set you working across the whole spectrum of educational
providers?
Professor Roberts: We can answer
that directly, Mr Cummings, and we have material here which I
will leave with the Clerk and you can look at this at your leisure.
We have some material which we have enough copies of for everybody.
Let us take the first one of those, working with the professional
bodies. This is part of the long-term solution which I referred
to, in other words we could have chosen to spend the monies available
to us doing an instant series of short courses on topics for the
day, individual topics. We chose not to do that. Indeed, we were
advised and tasked not to do that. One of the things that we have
done is to enter into a series of joint commitments with the various
professional bodies, including the Royal Town Planning Institute,
and these commitments mean that the professional body has agreed
to work with us on developing the generic skills which Sir John
Egan quite rightly put at the heart of the skills needed to create
sustainable communities. We are not tasked to deal with the particular
specialist skills required by individual professions, we are tasked
to deal with the generic skills that everybody needs in order
to make and maintain better places: skills like visioning, programme
development, project management, communication, partnership building,
leadership and so on, and that is what we were tasked to do. I
would have had my ears chewed off as Chair if I had allowed us
to start developing and delivering things which were not within
our tasked framework.
Q183 John Cummings: Could you be
quite specific and put this to bed once and for all because this
Committee have been told in no uncertain terms by previous witnesses,
particularly talk about Sainsbury's who say they have had little
contact with you, so can you give some specific examples of where
you have done work with employers and professional institutions?
Professor Roberts: I have made
reference to these joint commitments with the various professional
institutes and you have had evidence from the Royal Town Planning
Institute which is that they have worked with us. We have also
worked with a number of other professional bodies, all of which
were operating in areas of labour shortages and all of which contribute
to the achievements of the tasks which planners are central to.
We have worked with people like Constructing Excellence, we have
worked with people like Encams, we have worked with people like
the Landscape Institute, the Royal Institute of British Architects,
the Institution of Economic Development, the Chartered Institute
of Housing and so on, and these people have signed commitments.
We have developed and delivered.
Q184 John Cummings: When you say
you have been working with them, can you give an example. It is
not just a matter of sending a brochure out.
Professor Roberts: No, we will
give you a really hard-edged example and, again, if you want the
detailed evidence in terms of number of throughput students, we
can give you that. For example, one of the real difficulties that
we were specifically charged with resolving when I was appointed
was the fact that it has proved in the past, historically, very
difficult to get the various professionals—we talked about
102 activity areas—to work together as a team to deliver
better places. One of the things we have done in order to do that
is (a) to get the professional institutes to agree in principle
to do it and (b) through a programme called Raising Our Game to
design and deliver continuing professional development programmes
in regions, supported by, endorsed by and accredited for professional
development purposes by eight professional bodies. This programme
was first piloted in the north-west region, it was successfully
delivered in the north-west region, we had our first graduates
from it a year ago. You cannot do these things instantly; you
need to pilot them and you have to do them properly. There is
no point in half training people or badly training people, so
we piloted Raising Our Game and delivered it in the north-west
region. From that pilot, we smoothed off a few of the rough edges
and we launched the programme in other regions. That programme
is now running in most of the English regions. That is a hard
edged thing to deliver.
Q185 Emily Thornberry: How many people
are benefitting from it?
Professor Roberts: I said in total,
we can give you the detailed figures, I do not have them to hand.
Q186 Emily Thornberry: Roughly.
Professor Roberts: About 25 per
region. We did 24, I think, in the north-west and it has now been
rolled out; we have had, I think, 18 graduates in the south-west
and we have other people coming through the programme, but can
I emphasise, it does take a year or so to develop the agreement
with the professional bodies, to develop the learning material,
and then to start delivery. You cannot do these things overnight.
Q187 John Cummings: How many in the
pipeline?
Professor Roberts: In the pipeline,
about 150 people going through the pipeline at the moment.
Q188 Chair: I appreciate that it
is difficult to come up with the figures on the spot. Can we make
sure that the actual figures are provided afterwards? That would
be very helpful.
Professor Roberts: Yes. The feedback
we have had from employers and participants in this programme
has been absolutely positive, and the Royal Town Planning Institute
and other professional bodies have encouraged us to roll it out
as fast as we can. Our problem is, as ever, the capacity problem.
We cannot get people to teach them.
Q189 Andrew George: Just moving on
to the report, Mind the Skills Gap, how can the status of the
planning profession be raised?
Professor Roberts: How can the
status of the planning profession be raised? If you do not mind,
I would like Kevin Murray to comment as well. I think there is
an issue first of all which you are presumably referring to, in
terms of the way in which in recent years planners have found
themselves unable to make progress in some of the areas of employment
which they have sought. I think money is an issue, salary is an
issue, especially in the public sector, but it is not the sole
issue. I think the opportunity to practise the profession across
the full sphere of planning activities would help. One of the
suggestions has been, of course, that local authorities should
be required to have a chief planning officer, somebody to provide
leadership for the profession within an authority, rather than
just having an omnibus title, you know, director of planning,
development, environment or whatever. The third thing I think
is clearly the opportunity for people to gain experience across
the full range of professional activities, so that they do not
find themselves stuck in a rut, just doing a small defined function,
say in development control, but can Kevin Murray add to that,
please?
Q190 Chair: Can you say how you would
get them to get that broad range of skills that Professor Roberts
just referred to?
Mr Murray: There are a range.
Partly it is linked—and sorry, I should say that I am a
past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, so I am on
the professional side as well. One is through encouragement through
the Institute for employers to give them the range of experience,
that was something that happened, was stipulated in the past,
and is not so strongly pressurised now, so people can go through
narrower strands of training. The other is through exchanges between
employers, so, for instance, people working for developers or
development agencies, working in local authority planning departments,
to understand that, whether they stay or whether they move depends,
but it increases the capacity and the understanding across the
disciplines. Likewise, seconding people from Government departments
for a period to work, as happens, but not enough in my opinion.
So there is capacity for mutual learning, enhancing the number
of people, but not to the scale that I think we all recognise
the deficiencies.
Q191 Andrew George: Can I just take
the second of the three strands, the creation of more chief planning
officers, which is something which has been a trend—the
trend has been going in the opposite direction, has it not? If
you as an agency have a role in this, then presumably, you are
talking to local authorities, and you are emphasising to them
the importance of it, so could you explain to me your role in
developing that particular initiative and how successful you have
been so far?
Professor Roberts: Well, we do
have, as part of our Raising Our Game programme, a specific diploma
which is concerned with leadership, and it can be leadership across
the board or it can be leadership in relation to particular professional
functions, but we are also working with local authorities. Again,
you have caught us literally at the point where we have just launched
one of our new products, which is this one, Planning for Non-professionals.
This has been launched with local authorities, only just been
piloted, so we are just evaluating this pilot, but this makes
the point about the leadership of professional activities in local
authorities. We recognise these problems, and I am not trying
in any sense to be defensive on this, but there is a reality check
in terms of if we want to produce a quality contribution to improving
the standard of our professionals, planners and the other 101
categories of professional that we are tasked with dealing with,
then this literally cannot be achieved in a year. We cannot instantly
produce a product, because nobody, the Royal Town Planning Institute,
the Landscape Institute or anybody else would pay serious attention
to it. They would not be happy to validate, they would not be
happy to put their endorsement on it. The other thing that we
could clearly do in relation to the specific point you raise is
to make sure that there is, if you like, a professional development
pathway for people, so that they start as a graduate, they enter
employment, and they follow a professional development pathway.
One of the things that we are currently exploring, which we have
not finalised yet, is the idea of having a professional education
and training passport for people, so they can go through a process
of continual upgrading of their skills, which then allows them
to end up as the chief planner or some equivalent post within
a local authority. We need to create those pathways.
Q192 Andrew George: Could I just
ask, if you were to fill the skills gap, either you go down the
route of the professional development pathway; or the challenge
is one of recruitment of new planners, because you think that
the quality that you have presently is insufficient, and you need
to bring new blood into the profession; or it is a question of
on-the-job training, and there is insufficient training. Of those
three, if you like, areas of work, which would you say is the
biggest challenge, and the one which you should be concentrating
most of your time and resources on?
Professor Roberts: On-the-job
training is the thing we need to deal with immediately, and that
is why we are doing Raising Our Game, that is why we are working
with the colleagues through the joint commitments, and why we
are working now with local authorities, and you have seen our
first pilot. Again, I will leave all these things for you and
you can read them, and please come back and ask us further questions.
I said at the very beginning that we were established chiefly
to deliver solutions which would stick in the long term, so we
did not have to come back and have this debate in 10 years' time,
and that means, Mr George, that we have to influence the career
choices of young people. We have been doing a lot of work on careers,
we have been piloting and developing this work, including work
which I am sure the Chair knows about in Milton Keynes. We have
had a major programme called Making Places, and this is a major
product which has been rolled out, so that we have now, according
to the audited figures, influenced something in the order of 70,000
young people to try and persuade a higher percentage of these
young people to come into the sustainable communities professions,
including planning. We need to make this an attractive, challenging
and positive career choice for young people.
Q193 Mr Betts: Can I just follow
up? I see exactly what you are saying about having a range of
professionals, and you are trying to equip them with a greater
range of skills and get a broader outlook on life and equally
trying to get the various professions to work together. That all
seems consistent with a way forward, but to then argue that at
the same time you want to create a planning department, distinct
with a head of planning or chief planning officer, almost seems
a step backwards. You are saying on the one hand you want people
to work together, you want them to have a broader range of skills,
but then we need a chief planner to make sure things work.
Professor Roberts: The broader
range of skills is to make sure we connect the various professions
together. If you have a problem with professional leadership,
then you have to address that as well.
Q194 Mr Betts: Why do you need a
chief planner to do that? Why could not a surveyor be in charge
of that group of people, including planners?
Mr Murray: I think the question
Peter was responding to there was the status of the profession,
how can we make planning attractive, and one of the answers to
that is to have a distinctive role and head and function, that
if it is in part of a department of technical services, it is
harder to see that. But I would also add to what Peter is saying,
also we have to cater for and encourage people in the design professions,
like urban design and landscape and architecture, into housing
and other areas, so planning is one of them, and we are encouraging
young people from different backgrounds to go into a range of
those, not exclusively planning, but I think he was responding
to the question about the status and image of planning.
Professor Roberts: I am not denying
that, we do need a common connector, and that common connector
between the various professional groups is the package of generic
skills that Sir John Egan quite rightly said every person working
in this field needs, and that is the common connector.
Q195 Andrew George: I just wanted
to get down to brass tacks: do you see it that the problem with
planning is that over the last decade or so, it has simply attracted
people of too low a calibre, or is it that it is a problem of
training, professional development and the structure of the organisations
themselves?
Professor Roberts: This is not
something on which we have provided written evidence and we have
not drilled down into it in great depth from an ASC perspective,
because we have treated it as part of the broader research that
we have done. Can I just respond as somebody who has actually
been engaged in planning education since 1969, so I have 39 years'
experience, so mea culpa: if your planners are not good
enough, I am part of the reason. I do not think there is a single
answer—it is not either/or, Mr George, I think there are
a variety of things. First of all, when I started working in planning
education, planning was seen as something where people were making
positive choices, this was a subject that people really went into,
we had an expanding provision of planning schools. It is difficult
to get the figures, but I did a round robin with half a dozen
previous colleagues of mine, and I think there were something
like 26 planning schools operating in England in the late 1970s,
there are now less than 16. So we had an expanding capacity in
the 1960s and 1970s which then shrank in the late 1970s, in the
1980s and into the 1990s, so there is a capacity problem. Secondly,
there was a general downgrading of some of the enthusiasm for
planning and fewer young people with the better qualifications
came into planning. I think we have seen that the bursary scheme,
which the Department launched, has largely reversed that, and
again, I have been a recipient of that. I remember saying to a
colleague, when we get somebody with a first in economics from
the London School of Economics choosing to do postgraduate planning
rather than going to be a City broker, that is success. When I
worked at the Department of Civic Design in Liverpool, we got
somebody with an economics degree from the London School of Economics
choosing to do the postgraduate course in planning. So I think
planning is now successful in attracting some of the brightest
and the best, but we have a severe capacity problem in terms of
the number of places available in our university planning schools.
That is coupled with the need to retain planners in planning,
because planners have actually proved to be very adaptable and
flexible, and we have found a lot of the more able planners have
moved out of planning functions per se into other sustainable
communities activities: economic development, environmental management,
and so on. So planning education is actually proving very successful
at producing flexible and adaptable individuals. Then there is
the third point, we continually have to develop people through
better, more effective, better resourced and supported continuing
professional development. So it is all three, I am afraid, Mr
George. You cannot just do one, because we come back to the problem
again over time.
Chair: We are starting to run out of
time and we have two more topics. Emily, do you want to move on
the Homes and Communities Agency?
Q196 Emily Thornberry: I wanted to
move on really to the future of the Academy. As we understand
it, you are going to be taken into the Homes and Communities Agency.
How are you going to be able to remain independent within such
a substantial agency?
Professor Roberts: Can I pass
that to Dr Taylor, because she has been directly involved in this?
Dr Taylor: Thank you. Moving into
the HCA was something that the steering board of ASC asked to
happen, as it were. Because we are a small organisation—20
core staff and a budget of £5.5 million per year—one
of our biggest issues, as I think has come out today, is about
leverage. We were never set up as a direct delivery agency, we
are there to fill the gap, and in fact even state aid law would
prevent us from doing a lot of direct delivery of training because
we would be in competition with others. So how can we have more
impact, you know, more bang for the bucks that Government is putting
in? And working with the HCA I think gives us a number of opportunities.
However, the chief executive designate of the HCA, Sir Bob Kerslake,
has already said that he wants the separate identity and brand
of the ASC retained, he wants us to retain our core staff as now,
at the moment, and certainly he sees the advantage of us remaining
quasi-independent in terms of we work with groups of stakeholders
and partners, as we said, with the Sector Skills Councils, with
the professional bodies and with the HE sector, and these are
different core stakeholders from most of the rest of the HCA,
so there needs to be a degree of separation. But we would certainly
be part of that organisation, and I think adding value to it.
Q197 Emily Thornberry: So if you
are going to be adding value and if you are going to increase
your leverage, could you perhaps give us some practical examples
of what that would mean, and how will things change?
Dr Taylor: Yes, I think one very
practical example, and we have had discussions with the HCA over
this, is the reach we have into communities, if you like, and
also into the local government sector. There are a number of places
which are undergoing major transformation, whether they are growth
areas, whether they are areas with housing market renewal partnerships
and so on, and certainly in terms of going in and working with
places and providing some more practical support to the regional
directors that would be working in the HCA, in terms of their
analysis of whether their core partners have the capacity and
the skills to be able to take up the challenges for the HCA to
take up the new housing numbers. I think we can certainly add
value into that, so I think that is one very practical example.
Q198 Emily Thornberry: So you will
be able to tell the regional directors how good the planners are
in their area and whether they are going to be able to do the
job?
Dr Taylor: I do not know about
telling them, but certainly we can provide an analysis with a
number of stakeholders about what the capacity is, and it is not
just the planners, it can be leaders in a number of different
professional fields. There can also be other areas where there
are shortages, or where there is a need to do more with the professionals
who are there to upskill them around zero carbon, for example,
the implications of conflict resolution and governance issues,
to carry on with the sort of community benefit of new infrastructure
and so on. There are a number of areas, I do not think it is just
with planners.
Professor Roberts: Or with brownfield.
Dr Taylor: Yes, the other practical
example that I could give you is we are leading the national Brownfield
Skills Strategy on behalf of Government, together with English
Partnerships, and that will be some really practical training
and development activities, including with the RTPI and the planning
profession, about a professional development framework which focuses
particularly on brownfield, and given that 60% of new housing
targets are expected to be on brownfield land, that is an incredibly
important skills gap which many of us have at the moment and needs
to be bridged.
Professor Roberts: We have copies
of that document available for members of the Committee.
Q199 Andrew George: Given that the
major area identified by Egan is that of needing to develop the
skills to deal with climate change, what have you done to address
that skills gap and that need for skills development? I need a
brief answer.
Dr Taylor: Very quickly, we are
certainly not doing that alone, because there are a lot of people
in the field dealing with climate change. Two of my directors
today are in an important meeting with the Green Building Council
to do a gap analysis of exactly what is there, what is missing,
what our role is and what their role is. But in other practical
terms, for example, we have recently developed with a range of
partners a tool around zero carbon which will be about mitigation
and adaptation. That will be going on our website and is being
launched within the next month, and that will be of direct benefit
to planners, but it will also be of direct benefit to another
group of organisations and individuals.
Professor Roberts: We have also
been providing advice and support on the Eco-towns programme,
and running a series of national dissemination seminars for people
involved in the Eco-towns programme, and that work will continue.
There are various strands of work which are reflected in the more
specific spatial focus in our current business plan. This helps
us to focus on some of the issues for particular places like Eco-towns,
like growth areas, like housing market renewal partnerships, and
carbon is a big issue in all of those.
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