Communities and Local Government Committee: Inquiry on Planning Skills by Lindsay Frost, Director of Planning & Environmental Services

 

 

I am writing in response to the Select Committee's call for evidence on its inquiry into the skills capacity within local government to deliver sustainable communities.

 

The following evidence is a personal view from me as Director of Planning & Environmental Services at Lewes District Council (LDC). It has not been formally endorsed by the Council. LDC is a local planning authority for a mixed urban and rural area in East Sussex, serving an area of 292 sq. km and a population of 94,000. It includes the towns of Lewes, Seaford, Newhaven and Peacehaven/ Telscombe and an extensive rural area, much of which is AONB and proposed South Downs National Park. We handle around 1400 planning applications annually.

 

Like all other local planning authorities in South East England, LDC has difficulty in recruiting and retaining suitably qualified and experienced planning staff. The reasons for this national, and acute regional, shortage of planning staff have been well rehearsed in various documents over recent years and include:

 

· The "missing generation" of planners from the 1990's, when recruitment to university planning schools shrank and some undergraduate courses closed.

· The new system of Local Development Frameworks (created by the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004) "wrote off" much of the experience on structure and local plan work built up over the preceding 30 years and demanded a wide range of new skills.

· The seemingly endless round of legislative and policy changes from Government, which have had the overall effect of making the planning system more complicated, technically demanding, time consuming and expensive (not only for local planning authorities, but also for developers and third parties).

· The "bulge" of professional planners recruited with the expansion of planning in the late 1960's and early 1970's (especially related to the 1974 local government reorganisation) are now approaching retirement age and the wealth of experience they have will gradually be lost over the next few years.

· Recruitment and retention difficulties have led to the widespread use of agency staff, interim managers, temporary appointments and external consultants by many local planning authorities. This trend has been reinforced by drip-feed funding from Government in the form of Planning Delivery Grant. None of this is conducive to developing a stable, appropriately skilled, experienced and motivated work force who can deliver sustainable communities over the long term.

 

In response to the specific matters on which your Select Committee is seeking evidence, I have the following comments:-

 

(a) Recent changes to the range and detail of knowledge and skills needed by staff within planning departments

 

· Project Management (PPS12)

· Flood Risk Management (PPS25)

· Local Development Frameworks and all associated work, particularly sustainability appraisal (PPS12)

· Economic viability appraisal (PPS4, PPS12)

· Climate change and carbon reduction technologies (PPS1 supplement)

· Strategic Housing Market Assessment and Strategic Housing Land Availability Statements (PPS3)

· Retail and leisure needs assessments (PPS6)

· Infrastructure planning (PPS12 and proposals for Planning Gain Supplement and Community Levy Infrastructure)

 

Added together, the skills requirements arising from the above changes represent a huge increase in the professional knowledge and competence required of local authority planners.

 

(b) The main areas where a lack of skills is most pronounced

 

I believe that all of the above areas represent skills shortages within the planning profession, with the gaps varying from council to council depending on their size and staff mix, qualifications, experience and nature of local planning issues.

 

The key problem is the incremental growth in requirements for a "robust and comprehensive evidence base" to support planning policies and individual planning applications. This requires either a huge increase in in-house skills, or expensive acquisition of such skills by buying in expertise from specialist consultancies. The requisite consultancy studies will frequently cost £20,000 or more, in addition to the staff resources required to commission and manage them. Over the course of preparing an LDF Core Strategy, the first piece of the evidence base "jigsaw" can become out of date by the time the last piece is on the board. The added value of such additional work is sometimes questionable, but is required to fulfil the "tick box", process-driven, approach adopted in LDF legislation and used by Inspectors in applying "tests of soundness".

 

 

(c) Skills needed by, and the level of training provided to, councillors who make planning decisions, including on the proposed local member review bodies.

 

Elected members need, at the very least, basic induction training before sitting on a planning committee making decisions on planning applications. This basic training needs to be supplemented by a regular programme of training events to build up a working knowledge of planning issues. At LDC, we expect our planning councillors to undertake at least 10 hours training per year and have a wide ranging programme with in-house and external presenters, design initiatives with RIBA, and an annual review tour to see how planning decisions are implemented "on the ground".

 

The proposed new "local member review bodies" will generate new training needs for both councillors and officers, particularly given the rather confusing role of councils as the adjudicator on planning decisions it has previously made itself, only a few weeks before.

 

(d) The role and effectiveness of agencies involved in monitoring, developing and providing specialist knowledge and skills for planning officials and councillors, and their response to changes to the demands placed on planning departments

 

The Planning Advisory Service (PAS) and the Advisory Team on Large Applications (ATLAS) are playing a useful role, but they are small in size and their influence on planning authorities is, I believe, quite patchy. At LDC, we have worked closely with ATLAS on a large complex brownfield site and have found it a very rewarding experience, learning from the expertise ATLAS have drawn in and developing a framework for resolving some difficult planning issues.

 

However, from talking to other planning officers, I am aware that knowledge of the services offered by PAS and ATLAS varies considerably.

 

Other important players in the planning system (for example, the Environment Agency, Natural England, English Heritage) also have a patchy record in supporting local authorities in handling the additional demands of the reformed planning system. I have found some of these organisations to be very helpful indeed (for example, the Environment Agency on flood risk work), but others are hardly engaging with us. The commitment and ability of these external players (including the utility companies who will have a major role in infrastructure planning) to engage in the new planning system is far from clear.

 

The RTPI South East Branch provides a good annual programme of professional training events, which are competitively priced compared to those provided by commercial organisations, and which are usually directed to matters of current professional interest.

 

 

 

 

(e) The effectiveness of the Government in supporting local authorities as they respond to changes in the demands placed on them

 

The availability of Planning Delivery Grant (PDG) since 2003 has been very welcome indeed in bringing additional resources to local planning authorities. However, the grant is made available on an annual "drip feed" and can be highly variable from year to year. These factors mitigate against balanced and sensible long term investment in the service, promoting for example, short term appointments and one-off additions to the evidence base which cannot be sustained into the future. Under PPS25, for instance, Strategic Flood Risk Assessments are meant to be updated and thoroughly reviewed every three years. For us (like many other local authorities outside the major growth areas), the prospects for receipt of Housing and Planning Delivery Grant are not as good as previously under PDG.

 

The prevailing "target culture" in planning makes it increasingly difficult for planners to find the time to digest new policy initiatives coming out from Government and to attend day training courses. This is exacerbated by the staffing problems referred to earlier.

 

The role of PAS and ATLAS has been discussed earlier.

 

(f) The long term effectiveness of measures taken by local authorities and others to mitigate gaps in the skills and knowledge within planning departments

 

At LDC, we are spending more time and money providing training for our planning staff. This embraces both young planners undertaking professional qualification courses and established professionals engaging in continuing professional development. However, the scale and pace of change arising from Government policies is making it difficult to keep up, for the reasons set out in (a) to (e) above.

 

A particular problem is that the investment in young planners is often lost after they have achieved professional qualification. Planners with five years plus experience are highly marketable and are particularly attractive to the expanding planning consultancy sector. Over the years we have seen many promising young planners lost to the public sector in this way. I expect this to continue in future, unless salaries for planners reflect market realities instead of rather rigid national pay structures.