THE CLG SELECT COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO PLANNING SKILLS

Memorandum by ATLAS

 

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 ATLAS (Advisory Team for Large Applications) provides an independent advisory service to local authorities that are experiencing the pressure of increased development activity. ATLAS works with local authorities and the private sector to facilitate the efficient delivery of high quality large scale developments (generally over 500 homes and likely to include a mix of uses). It has recently expanded its geographical area from South East, South West, East of England and London to include East and West Midlands. The original core objective of ATLAS was to engage in large scale projects to assist delivery. As the team has developed and grown, the scope of its activity has broadened to respond to the various complex issues that are involved in achieving delivery and ATLAS now provides a thorough and holistic service based on a model of project working, learning, dissemination and influencing.

1.2 This paper sets out our evidence on the capacity of planning skills in local government based on ATLAS's experience, together with an outline of ATLAS's involvement and effectiveness in raising skills levels across the planning profession.

2. OUR EVIDENCE

2.1 This evidence to the Select Committee is structured under four overarching workstreams through which ATLAS is delivering its service and engaging with the planning community in practice:

§ Project development and delivery;

§ Research and dissemination;

§ Planning system development; and

§ Collaboration.

Project Development and Delivery

2.2 Since its establishment in 2004, ATLAS has supported almost 50 local authorities in bringing forward large scale development projects involving over of 90,000 residential units. We therefore have a significant body of experience from which to draw some conclusions on the skills capacity within local government to deliver large scale development and sustainable communities. However, ATLAS experience thus far has been limited to the South East, South West and East of England and may not reflect skills and capacity issues elsewhere in the country. It is also important to recognise that ATLAS is only involved in a proportion of Local Planning Authorities across its area of operation (currently approximately 25%) and thus are only exposed to those issues where support has specifically been requested. This may be down to limited awareness of what ATLAS can offer, no large scale projects requiring ATLAS assistance in other Local Planning Authority areas, or a true (or at least perceived) no need for ATLAS support in these areas.

2.3 From ATLAS's experience, many of the local authorities we work with (particularly those that have not previously experienced substantive growth on a large scale) have struggled to make the step change needed to bring forward large scale and complex projects in a comprehensive, inclusive and managed way. Good corporate leadership and strong collaboration skills within local authorities can be highly variable and this influences the overall approach to management and delivery of large scale projects within the organisation. Particular skills gaps that ATLAS has been requested by local authorities to provide assistance with in respect of delivering projects include:

§ vision and objective setting;

§ project management & process;

§ master planning process;

§ technical issues including transport advice, urban design and sustainable construction;

§ planning obligations - objective setting, process for negotiating, and technical advice on areas like affordable housing and social infrastructure;

§ project viability and development finance; and

§ consultation and communication techniques.

2.4 With respect to the specific tasks that ATLAS has engaged in to date, the greatest proportion have related to providing advice and assistance on project management and delivery; followed by advice on master-planning and urban design; and then in relation to scoping, evidencing and negotiating planning obligations.

2.5 The above information clearly indicates that there continues to be a critical skills gap both in generic and technical skills in managing large scale projects to secure well-planned, sustainable new development. ATLAS is well-placed to help address these gaps in that it can focus on specific projects and essentially act as a 'critical friend' to a local authority during the life of a development proposal providing targeted assistance where required, often in tandem with other bodies such as CABE.

2.6 In terms of how ATLAS operates, we include a thorough inception stage for any new project that we engage with. This is critical in helping us identify with the Local Planning Authority the nature of the project and identify the resources and skills available or lacking to help progress it. Following the inception stage, ATLAS provides advice, examples of good practice, assistance and support in dealing with negotiations and third parties. A key aspect of our engagement with a local authority is that we are very clear that any 'learning' that arises from our engagement should be disseminated throughout the authority and applied to other projects in order to maximize impacts across as broad an audience as possible.

2.7 ATLAS strongly believes that responsibility for bringing forward major development within a Local Authority goes well beyond the planning department. It needs high level corporate support, and a range of skills and competencies that are both technical and generic. There must be a recognition that the Development Team for a particular project stretches across departmental boundaries to include technical skills found in housing, corporate policy, leisure, environment, legal and transport functions and that all must work collaboratively to understand the issues in the round and agree a way forward in an efficient manner. This regularly stretches beyond a single authority, for example in two tier locations, where functions such as transport and education lie with the county, and where developments straddle authority boundaries. Difficult decisions are likely to be required, eg where objectives are incompatible or priorities need to be identified, to achieve the best planning balance. This relies on corporate competencies at a high level including leadership, clear decision-making, confidence, relationship building, risk-taking and good communication.

2.8 In ATLAS experience both strong collaboration and good corporate leadership within a Local Authority can bee highly variable. Often planning as a function is given low priority, buried deep in the corporate structure. There is often little recognition of the scale and breadth of resources that will be required to handle a major project, or indeed the need for the overall process to be managed holistically.

2.9 In assisting local authorities on projects, ATLAS focuses on building capacity and confidence in those local planning authorities with which it is engaged, enabling them to improve their abilities and use their resources most effectively to manage and deliver large scale development proposals. Collaboration is key to the ATLAS approach and local authorities are strongly encouraged to build positive relationships with developers and other stakeholders.

2.10 ATLAS believes that planners cannot be experts in all technical issues but that a basic level of understanding across multiple issues is necessary, coupled with generic skills in communication, evaluation and negotiation. Levels of project management skills generally appear to be low, and often project management is perceived to be or made overly complicated, such as through a reliance on over-complex technical software not well suited to the needs of a particular project.

2.11 In ATLAS experience authorities often also lack the visioning and leadership skills to articulate to a developer what it is seeking to achieve on a site (a vision and objectives), and its response to a proposal is often a reactive one. ATLAS shares CABE's view that there is a deficit of skills in creating good places, and that authorities need assistance to focus on the quality of the outcomes, and to reintroduce greater challenge, creativity and innovation into planning. This should move the process away from being a reactive, often adversarial mentality focussed on 'control' and 'them and us' to a more collaborative and participative system embodying greater trust and understanding.

2.12 The problem that many authorities face is simply a lack of officers, particularly those with adequate experience and knowledge of local context. There are many reasons for this - stretched budgets, difficulties in retaining staff - which have been analysed and written up extensively elsewhere, including research by Academy for Sustainable Communities (Mind the Skills Gap report, 2007) and Planning Advisory Service (PAS). Some authorities are embracing the problem by investing in young staff with limited experience who can be trained up.

2.13 In addition, the skills debate is not restricted to officers within the Local Planning Authority. ATLAS project experience suggests that private sector generic and technical skills and attitudes can also be highly variable. The change in working practices to a more structured and collaborative process is also proving challenging to the development industry as a whole, including developers, consultants and other key third parties. Addressing established working practices takes time and culture change will undoubtedly take some time to achieve.

ATLAS Effectiveness

2.14 The ATLAS service is independently evaluated and monitored every 3 months in relation to those projects it is actively engaged with. This aims to ensure that those individuals across the planning community that are working with ATLAS benefit from that engagement, and surveys them directly as to the value we may be adding to their work The latest quarterly report illustrates a high level of impact among local authorities, with 87% of responses attributing some positive effects across a range of indicators illustrating that more often than not ATLAS has raised the skills and confidence in the authority for future work.

2.15 Interviewee responses are confidential, but the evaluation provides a useful commentary as to areas needing further work or identification of where we are being most successful. The reports contain useful quotes help to give a flavour of feedback such as "they put in place a good practice process for dealing with large applications; it's a model we will look to replicate at earlier stages in future" and "they provide practical, pragmatic, well considered advice".

Research and Dissemination

2.16 With its hands-on contact with local authorities, ATLAS is well placed to identify knowledge and skills gaps and respond accordingly. In ATLAS's experience, knowledge gaps among local authority officers can arise for a number of reasons - an inability or lack of political will to apply emerging or new guidance to local circumstances, lack of knowledge of good practice used elsewhere, lack of time or resource to research solutions to problems that may arise through the course of dealing with a large scale development proposal.

2.17 From its experience to date, ATLAS has identified a number of areas in which it could usefully provide guidance for planners including:

§ the approach to managing large scale development;

§ how to secure true collaborative working between the public and private sectors;

§ what makes a sustainable high quality place and how to achieve it - in physical, environmental and social terms; and

§ testing viability and in particular the relationship with delivering affordable housing.

2.18 ATLAS has adopted the general approach that dissemination should largely be based upon the knowledge gathered from direct project experience, to ensure that any guidance is both practical and useful to the planning community. This area of work has therefore been limited in the early years to enable a body of evidence and learning to be established, but is now becoming more important to ensure that good practice is communicated to as wide an audience as possible.

2.19 To date, dissemination of research and information by ATLAS has largely been achieved by the:

§ creation of the 'ATLAS Guide : Planning for Large Scale Development' website;

§ preparation of research and guidance reports; and

§ organisation of and presentation at workshops and events.

ATLAS Guide: Planning for Large Scale Development

2.20 The ATLAS web-based Guide has been created to provide advice and help steer local authorities, other public sector bodies and private stakeholders through the town planning process in relation to large, complex or strategic development projects. (www.atlasplanning.com). It draws upon the experience of the team of projects across a variety of locations and contexts. The Guide was launched in 2007 and is intended to be a live resource that will be updated regularly. Current usage averages over 1000 visits per month and further awareness-raising initiatives will occur through 2008 to increase this considerably.

2.21 The Guide has evolved in close collaboration with a number of external stakeholders to ensure that its content is accurate and relevant. It contains an extensive range of topic papers and links to other research documents developed in partnership with a range of external stakeholders. By way of illustration, the topic paper on Heritage evolved with English Heritage, on Design Quality with CABE and on Engagement with CLG directly. The site is fully linked in to other web based planning initiatives such as the Planning Portal, CLG website, PAS website and Planning Officers Society. General feedback is positive with endorsements received such as:

2.22 "The ATLAS Guide contains a huge amount of well researched and comprehensive information and I'm sure it will become an invaluable, independent and authoritative source of advice and guidance for all involved in dealing with large scale planning projects." Leonora Rozee OBE, Deputy Chief Exec & Director of Policy at PINS.

Research and guidance reports

2.23 ATLAS will continue to develop guidance on areas where it has undertaken unique research based on its own intelligence. To date it has worked with PAS on researching Planning Delivery Agreements and more recently produced guidance for CLG on Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs - see below). ATLAS has also produced a report on the use of Cascades for affordable housing (in partnership with English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation), fed in to the evolution of the Urban Design Compendium (English Partnerships), and is working on a number of projects with external partners including ASC, Culture East Midlands, South East Excellence, the RTPI and others.

Workshops and events

2.24 To date ATLAS has hosted or facilitated a number of events as well as taking part in dissemination events organised by others.

2.25 At the national level, in the latter half of 2007, ATLAS ran a series of nine conference events around the country on Planning Performance Agreements. Over 400 delegates attended, mainly from local authorities and statutory agencies and approximately 80% of attendees rated the events as good or excellent. Two separate events were run jointly with PAS to provide training on facilitating the inception stage of PPAs, and ATLAS also assisted in the delivery of a separate PAS organised series of events focussed on Pre Application working and Design & Access Statements.

2.26 At a more local level, ATLAS facilitates workshops for local authorities covering specific issues such as vision and objective setting, design and master planning, affordable housing, and viability. Such workshops are tailor-made for the relevant local authority and have proved to be an effective way of disseminating knowledge and learning about issues relevant to a local project.

Planning System Development

2.27 The new planning system is based on concepts of spatial planning and development management. Both of these require a planning system underpinned by collaboration and good communication. Effective development management and collaboration are central to the ATLAS approach. To support this approach ATLAS has been actively leading on promoting Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs). This concept has evolved from early research undertaken by ATLAS jointly with PAS in 2006 that explored the concept of Planning Delivery Agreements and led directly to a pilot project to test their use in practice. The outcome has been the formal introduction of PPAs into the planning system.

2.28 Given its involvement in project-based work with local authorities, ATLAS is well-placed to play a key role in the promotion, providing training and assisting in the roll-out of PPAs. It considers that PPAs will be an effective mechanism in raising the skills sets among local authority officers by providing an appropriate framework for managing large scale developments through a simple structure of defining objectives, issues and tasks.

2.29 However, PPAs are as much about a way of working as a project management tool. This requires a culture change that for many may take some time to materialise. Many authorities (and indeed developers) handling large scale sites remain focussed on a planning application and negotiation based on an adversarial approach rather than considering a major project from inception to delivery, and working collaboratively. PPAs should also encourage an authority and development partners to focus more on what it is trying to achieve for a site through shared vision and objective setting.

2.30 From ATLAS's experience, success can often be down to attitude and not necessarily by a lack of skills. Those who have the ability to act pro-actively, are committed and want to make things happen will often drive a project forward where others fail to. Some individuals have grown into the challenge if the corporate culture and the qualities of the individual allow. This is very variable across authorities.

2.31 Other partner organisations have undertaken valuable work on planning system development, such as PAS and Planning Officers Society Enterprises work on development management. ATLAS has and continues to contribute to a number of studies into the planning system and has positively contributed to steering groups eg CABE planning forum, PAS, National Planning Forum, Planning Officers Society, etc.

Collaboration and Partnership

2.32 In considering the effectiveness of government in supporting Local Planning Authorities to respond to the challenges of delivering high quality and sustainable new communities, ATLAS recognises the need for central government and other public sector bodies to practice what they preach in providing a service that is joined-up, collaborative and comprehensive. It supports PAS objective of ensuring clarity on the role and purpose of each advisory organisation. It aims to achieve these ends by:

§ Working in partnership with PAS on initiatives where we have a shared interest eg PPAs;

§ Working with other agencies and organisations: with direct links to RTPI, Planning Officers Society and RIBA. This ensures we are complementing and supporting others rather than duplicating work; and

§ Creating "Memorandum of Understandings" with external partners to set out the principles of joint working. For example, ATLAS evolved an MoU with CABE, recognising that we are likely to increasingly be involved in the same areas, eg growth points, and need to provide and promote each other as complementary services. ATLAS promotes the CABE national and regional design review panels where appropriate for its projects.

2.33 ATLAS has also prepared an internal Communications Strategy which sets out in some detail how it intends to communicate and collaborate with a broad range of partners, to ensure that the overall offer of public sector support ATLAS makes is consistent and complementary to the services offered by other agencies.

3. SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE

3.1 ATLAS is well placed to comment on the practical difficulties being faced by planners in relation to the evolution, appraisal and delivery of planning proposals for large scale growth. Our services are tailored to respond to these difficulties, both on a project by project basis, and also in the way in which ATLAS disseminates guidance. The core areas ATLAS tends to provide support relate to:

§ Project management and ensuring an effective, collaborative planning process;

§ How to approach and secure high quality urban design through a structured masterplanning process;

§ Understanding and appreciating the concept of spatial planning drawing in other influences into the process such as transport, movement, environmental sustainability, social cohesion, etc;

§ Bridging the gap between the public and private sectors, for example by securing shared project objectives, appreciating the positions of alternative stakeholders, and building trust between the partners;

§ Ensuring a holistic view is maintained, not least involving the appreciation of development economics, viability and risk.

3.2 The team is focussed on working with all those involved in large scale growth - including Local Planning Authority officers together with applicants, consultants and important third parties to help build capacity and enable them to work collaboratively to improve the quality of planning process. An improved process should lead directly to improvements to the quality of decision making and final development outcomes. ATLAS is not the final decision maker, but empowers others to take this role with confidence.

3.3 ATLAS is accessible to and committed to working positively with all involved in the planning process across both the public and private sectors, and is proactively working with other public sector support agencies and services to ensure the services it provides are practical, effective and complementary to other available support.