Communities and Local Government Select Committee

 

The Planning Skills Inquiry Memorandum by: Janet Askew MRTPI, Head of the School of Planning and Architecture, University of the West of England, Bristol,

 

 

1. Introduction

 

1.1. This evidence is submitted to the CLG Select Committee Inquiry on Planning Skills by Janet Askew, Head of the School of Planning and Architecture at the University of the West of England, Bristol. The school is the largest planning school in the UK, with 63 staff and approximately 900 students studying for degrees which are accredited by the Royal Town Planning Institute. Qualifications include undergraduate and postgraduate initial planning education, delivered through taught courses as well as by distance learning. In addition, the school has a reputation for delivering courses for continuing professional development, including a large number of short courses on different subjects, aimed mainly at people employed in the profession in both private and public sectors. The school is a member of the Committee of Heads of Planning Schools, the current chair of which has submitted generic evidence about the skills and knowledge being developed in planning schools, acknowledging that different schools offer different approaches and different types of programmes. All schools offer initial planning education, but the University of the West of England, Bristol has also pioneered some practice based education for new planners, as well as mid career planners, and it is this that this evidence will concentrate upon. It will attempt to respond to the following points in the call for evidence:

· Recent changes to the range and detail of knowledge and skills in planning departments;

· Main areas where lack of skills is most pronounced;

· Skills, knowledge and training needed for councillors;

· Role and effectiveness of agencies providing specialist knowledge to planning officers and councillors.

 

2. Recent changes to the range and detail of knowledge and skills in planning departments, and main areas where lack of skills is most pronounced

 

2.1. Planning is undergoing a culture change, and the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act of 2004 heralded a new approach to planning, which is termed the 'spatial planning approach'. In particular, this major 'culture change' in the way that planners perform their jobs, asks that a new and integrated approach to planning is adopted. The reforms demand new types of plans at the regional and local levels, and a new more pro-active approach to managing development, which moves away from the negative control culture, so often associated with the profession. The new approach places the profession of planning at the heart of local government, and requires planners to encourage development by facilitating the involvement of all stakeholders, including developers, the community, sectoral interests - transport, health, education, environment etc. The new planner is supposed to be bringing all interests together across sectors and across geographic boundaries where necessary. This is all set within a national framework of policies and plans, and in order for this to happen, there are many new regulations (some requiring primary legislation and the Planning Bill is going through parliament now), but also a new language which challenges old ways of doing things.

 

2.2. MA Spatial Planning

Since 2004, academics and practitioners have been coming to terms with the new planning system. To recognise this, CLG commissioned UWE in 2005 to design and deliver the MA in Spatial Planning, for which they paid £250,000. (see reference to it in White Paper, 2007). The new course had to be flexible, cheap, accessible, possible to be studied as and when people had time, and aimed at mid career practitioners to encourage them to engage with the new skills for a new agenda. The MA Spatial Planning has been designed to be offered entirely by distance learning with interactive educational methods, and can be done as continuing professional development (CPD), or students can build up credits from a series of topics (63 in total), which, along with a dissertation, leads to the award of a master's degree. It is possible for students to develop this qualification into a professional doctorate too, with the writing of a much longer thesis contextualised in the workplace. It was launched in November 2005 by Baroness Andrews, since when it has been recruiting students. The website for this degree can be found at:

http://www.built-environment.uwe.ac.uk/spatialplanning/

 

2.3. Along with civil servants from CLG, a steering group advised UWE on the content of the course, including representatives from the Planning Inspectorate, the Local Government Association, the Planning Officers' Society, the Royal Town Planning Institute and a community planner, and the course content was subject to review. The subjects identified reflect ideas about what planners in mid career need to understand to enable them to proceed with the new agenda, and include:

· Spatial policy integration - understanding the integration of different sectors, sometimes across geographic boundaries, to produce much needed development, such as new housing and sustainable communities;

· Understanding spatial development - this sets the agenda to allow planners to understand what drives development, including economic and social drivers, and the influence of different sectors - transport, health and education for example;

· Spatial policy and plan-making - looking at how new plans should be made, and the kind of techniques required to make the new set of regional and local plans, and in particular how they differ from the former series of plans;

· Inclusion in planning - this recognises the new emphasis on engagement with communities, and in recognising this, helping planners define different communities, and how to approach and plan for their inclusion. This might include hard to reach groups, but also other interests, such as the business community;

· Policy appraisal - looks at techniques for appraising and monitoring how policy is working, and new methods of doing this, including new approaches such as GIA, impact assessment including sustainability appraisal, strategic environmental assessment, environmental impact assessment, sectoral impacts, such as health and transport impact;

· Delivering development - planners often suggest that they do not sufficiently understand economic and financial approaches to development, but there is a requirement for them to adopt more pro-active partnership approaches now, which are explained in this module, along with an understanding of how the development industry works;

· Efficiency and effectiveness in managing development - planners must adopt more positive methods of delivering development and assisting the industry to deliver without the negative connotations of control. New regulations and initiatives in recent years have encouraged a speedier response by local planning authorities to development proposals, but efficiency must not be at the expense of quality. This looks at how the transition from development control to development management might be effective, with techniques for negotiation, assessment (of, for example, flood risk, waste, environmental impact) explained.

· Research for policy and practice - the new planning system requires a sound evidence base. This is something that planners have traditionally been good at, but understanding research techniques is clearly important for the credibility of the work that planners undertake.

 

2.4. The course is aimed mainly at planners, but as the new agenda reaches out to other sectors, there may be aspects of the course that are interesting to health professionals, educationalists, councillors, community workers, etc. This is how UWE interpreted the new planning agenda, and these are the new skills and knowledge with which senior planners need to engage if they are going to deliver spatial planning to produce sustainable communities.

 

2.5. Foundation Degree in Development Management and Planning Practice

The University of the West of England was commissioned by CLG in 2007 to produce a Foundation Degree in Development Management and Planning Practice. Statistics (Audit Commission 2006) show that local planning authorities are experiencing severe shortages in the area of planning and the management of development, formerly known as development control. There has been a steep increase in the number of planning applications, and research shows that recruitment is a problem for local planning authorities, especially in the area of the consideration of minor applications (householder applications, for example). To this end, UWE designed a new programme aimed at unqualified people who were working in local planning authorities and who needed to learn the new skills of development management as soon as possible. This is the new foundation degree, delivered by 'blended learning' with distance learning components and some face to face contact (6 days per annum), delivered at three universities in Bristol, London and Sheffield, giving a geographic spread across England. The skills on offer in this programme initially give enough of an understanding of the new planning system to enable people to process planning applications, while developing and building a knowledge about planning, firstly towards a foundation degree and ultimately to a full professional qualification. Skills are an important part of a foundation degree, and these will be developed in conjunction with some experiential learning undertaken in the work place. The aim of the course is not just to assist local authorities to manage development control workloads, but to engage the students with the new agenda and ways of carrying out the more pro-active methods of development management.

 

3. Role and effectiveness of an agency (UWE) in providing specialist knowledge and skills to planning officials and councillors

3.1. Recruitment to all planning courses for undergraduates and postgraduates is high at UWE, with approximately 150 students in the first year studying initial planning education on RTPI accredited courses. Recruitment to postgraduate courses across England has been assisted by the award of bursaries by CLG to outstanding candidates for the MA in Town and Country Planning, the prospect of a bursary inviting an over-subscription of candidates for the courses, creating competition between students who apply. UWE has always recruited well amongst part-timers, many of whom undertake the degrees with sponsorship from employers, and most employers who sponsor students are local planning authorities. The current intake of part time students to the master's degree is about 50 per annum There is also a part time course for undergraduates, attracting about 15 per annum, nearly all sponsored by local authorities (separate from the afore-mentioned foundation degree). In addition, UWE manages and runs the only initial planning education to be delivered by distance learning, mostly carried out by people who are in a related work field, and again, mostly in local authorities, with about 70 recruits per annum. This course operates a waiting list as it is over-subscribed. Recruitment to the new foundation degree is promising in its first year of operation and there are about 15 students, all of whom are from local authorities. In other words, local authorities recognise that they cannot recruit staff, and that the best way to acquire qualified staff is to pay for their training and education. Part time courses offer much to local authorities, as students undertake their studies more or less in their own time, apart from the days they attend college, and in the case of the foundation degree, this is only 6 days per annum.

 

3.2. Figures and take up for the new CLG-sponsored MA in Spatial Planning are less than we might have hoped by this time in the age of the course. We are confident that the 'product' is good and relevant, and also that numbers will grow as the course develops a reputation, but we might have expected more students to have enrolled by now. To date, only 150 students have studied on the MA Spatial Planning course, many of whom are using it for CPD purposes, but some seem likely to proceed to complete the degree. Every local authority in England was written to in a joint letter from the Chief Planner at CLG, the Chief Executive of PINS and the Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment urging them to engage with the new course, and sponsor students to study on it. An extensive advertising campaign continues, along with numerous initiatives; feedback suggests that the course offers relevant knowledge and appropriate skills for the new agenda. The course has already had a constructive spin-off in assisting UWE to further develop spatial planning ideas with undergraduates and postgraduates, as well as investigating other courses, such as the MBA in Planning. Leadership in planning has been identified as a major weakness in the planning profession (Morphet, 2007).

 

3.3. What is disappointing is either the apparent reluctance of existing (and qualified) planners to re-train in the new skills, or of local authorities and consultancies to pay for mid career planners to study for further qualifications. It is likely that the numbers accessing the course will build, but it is worth considering some of the reasons why mid career planners are not engaging with lifelong learning:

 

· It is aimed at mid career planners who report that they are already hard-pressed at work, trying to engage with the new system, including trying to meet planning application targets. High workload is partly a factor of the difficulties in recruiting newly qualified planners, but recruitment in universities is high, and this will release more planners into the labour market over the next few years;

· Anecdotally, there is some negativity amongst professionals about the implementation of the new system, and many local planning authorities are slow to change (to write new plans for example: PINS reports that the progress of the production of core strategies has been much slower than originally anticipated);

· Mid career planners are more likely to have domestic responsibilities which prevent them from undertaking further study;

· There is a view that CPD is not particularly well supported by the employers - both in the public and private sectors. The public sector (mainly) seems willing to fund staff for initial planning education, but not necessarily for already qualified staff to change their skills. Whilst the aim of this select committee is to look at planning skills in the public sector, it needs to be understood that some of the work of the public sector is in fact done by the private sector on a consultancy basis (Audit Commission, 2006), meaning that consultants have to engage with new learning too. This is not only about funding courses, but about giving time to staff for pursuing a new course or CPD.

· There is no reward in financial terms for mid career staff who do progress their learning with new qualifications. Staff are often promoted upon becoming members of the profession (RTPI), but promotion is seldom tied to additional qualifications in the mid career.

 

3.4. It is recommended that the Select Committee gives some consideration to ways in which planners who are already working in both public and private sectors can better engage with the new agenda to produce more meaningful spatial plans and more effective and efficient ways of managing development.

 

References

Audit Commission (2006) 'The planning system: matching expectations and capacity', Audit Commission, London

 

CLG (2007) 'Planning for a Sustainable Future' White Paper, HMSO, London

 

Morphet, J. et al, 'Shaping and Delivering Tomorrow's Places: Effective Practice in Spatial Planning', RTPI, London

 

 

Janet Askew MRTPI,

 

27 February 2008