UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 517-iii of Session 2007-08

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

communities and local government committee

 

 

planning skills

 

 

monday 12 May 2008

MR ROBERT UPTON and MS SUE PERCY

 

MR PAUL LOVEJOY, MS PAT TEMPANY, MS MIRANDA PEARCE

and MR DOMINIC MURPHY

 

Evidence heard in Public Questions 116 - 163

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee

on Monday 12 May 2008

Members present

Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair

Mr Clive Betts

John Cummings

Mr Greg Hands

Mr Bill Olner

________________

Memoranda submitted by the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Royal Town Planning Institute South East Branch

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Robert Upton, Secretary General, and Ms Sue Percy, Director of Membership, Education and Lifelong Learning, Royal Town Planning Institute, gave evidence.

Q116 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome. The Committee has already heard significant evidence about the need to replace the missing generation of planners but also to upgrade the skills of the planners that we already have. Can we start off with you briefly explaining what the RTPI is doing to try to meet the gap in availability of skills, to meet the sustainable communities agenda and the other parts of the Government's planning agenda?

Mr Upton: I think there are two element to this, firstly the shortage of professional planners in general and secondly the actual shortage of skills. When it comes to the shortage of planners we have undertaken some quite significant educational initiatives over the last seven years or so which has increased the throughput, particularly of postgraduate planners. Some very able people are coming through the planning schools now. We have also revised our routes into membership so that, for example, through the new class of associate membership it is possible for more people to be drawn mid-career into planning and to be developed that way. In terms of the actual shortage of skills, we ourselves offer a very wide range of training on both the commercial basis and also low cost events. We have our own programmes like Planning Matters which provide online support to planners. I think it is important here to take the long view. The development of skills absolutely rests on a bedrock of education. The skills which planners require will change many times during their working careers and that is a function not just of new legislation and new policy but changing circumstances and changing requirements. What good planners critically need is a very solid educational foundation. If they have the solid education and they understand the "why" then they will be able to develop new approaches to the "what" and the "how" over the years. For us that is a very major part of our mission.

Q117 Chair: Who are you addressing? Which institutions are you addressing when you are trying to ensure that that bedrock of education is provided?

Mr Upton: We have a direct relationship with planning schools and universities in this country and indeed elsewhere and we set the basic educational philosophy which they are required to respond to.

Q118 Chair: They are required?

Mr Upton: If they want accreditation that is.

Q119 Chair: So lever that you have is that you provide the accreditation.

Mr Upton: That is right and that is quite valuable. We have been very successful and very much assisted by the bursaries which the CLG gives to postgraduate students. One thing which we think for a very small amount of money in relative terms could be done which would improve the situation would be if the Government were to make a similar amount of money available to support final year under-graduate students, in particular those who are progressing to what we call a professional masters. There is a critical shortage and it is still quite hard in current circumstances to make sure that all courses are full of good people. We think that a small amount of money would go a very long way there.

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 catching 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 per cent complete their studies - which is excellent - but on graduation 36 per cent go into local government, 34 per cent 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 stocks, 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 sometime 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 per cent 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 in Spatial Planning which was 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 doing jointly with the Government on what is infelicitously called Effective Practices and 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 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 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 we 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.

Q140 Chair: Can you pinpoint any local authorities that, from your experience, you think do invest adequately in upgrading the skills of their planning people?

Ms Percy: We have a number of what we term learned partners which are employers of planners, both public and the private sector, who apply for learned partner status which is a benchmark of excellence in the professional development of their staff. We do have a number of whose who are local authorities and that includes, for example, Three Rivers District Council, Cambridge City Council, London Borough of Merton and others. That is where they have proper schemes in place which actually look after the professional development of their staff. They take it very seriously and they do look to release their staff so that staff can actually go on courses but not just on a "just in time" basis where they literally just get the information, use it, forget about it and move on. These learned partners actually have proper investment in the way their staff are developed and there are indicators now that for a number of these learned partners there are also retention benefits; it is not just about up-skilling their staff, it is actually about recruiting because some students now ask the local authorities if they are learned partners because they are actually very savvy and they want to know whether they are going to be supported through their professionals lives.

Q141 Chair: Could that information be made available to us, the evidence that it actually has an effect on retention or recruitment for that matter?

Ms Percy: We can certainly supply what we have, although it is early stages.

Mr Upton: Yes, it has been going for just over a year I think. It is essentially the kitemark which we grant not just to public sector but to private sector organisations to show that they have satisfied us that they have made a proper commitment to developing and supporting their professional staff. The Planning Inspectorate, for example, was one of the first organisations.

Q142 Mr Olner: We have dealt with training for professionals, but I find it outstandingly arrogant that you should be saying that before a local authority member can sit on a planning committee they should be trained. I say this as an ex-local authority member, as an ex-chairman of a planning committee; I just wonder what route you are trying to go down in saying that before anybody sits on a planning committee they should receive some formal type of training.

Mr Upton: I am sorry if it strikes you as arrogant. I do not think it is arrogant, I think it is concern for their welfare.

Q143 Mr Olner: Or might it be to put some more money in your pockets because you will be doing the training?

Mr Upton: No, not necessarily. Again there are many people out there who are prepared to offer those services; we do a small amount of it but we are not fighting for market share. It is for their own protection. As I am sure you are all well aware, it is very easy these days for local authority members to get themselves into significant trouble if they are not well advised and do not have a real understanding of issues around probity and what they can and cannot do. What we are not trying to do is to turn them into junior professionals; that is not the object of the exercise at all, they have professionals there to advise them. They need to know enough about the environment and the circumstances and the conditions in which they are working so that they do not get themselves into trouble or get the authority into trouble.

Q144 Mr Olner: Most local authority members I know who sit on planning committees do know that but they are also there to represent the people who elected them. I have to say that the planners do not always get it right.

Mr Upton: I agree entirely. As we say in the submission, there are many, many members of local authorities who have served on planning committees of one sort or another over many years who have developed a great expertise; there is no question about that but they are not born that way. Also I think there is not a consistency of practice between local authorities.

Q145 Mr Olner: There is not a consistency between the advice that is given to councillors from planning officers either.

Mr Upton: That is also true.

Q146 Mr Hands: Also as a former local authority member (but I was not distinguished enough to be chairman of a planning committee), I was slightly surprised when you said that the issues in your view are much more related to probity rather than, say, a general knowledge of how the planning system works. I am sympathetic to a lot of what you are saying, especially given the quasi judicial nature of a planning committee, but are issues of probity really better dealt with by the local authority in-house rather than compulsory training for councillors? In other words, we have this whole structure in place of standards, committees and registrations of interest, how much of the probity side of things do you think is covered by that and how much do you think specifically needs training?

Mr Upton: Yes, local planning committee members will have access to the advice of the borough solicitor or whoever, but I still think that in their own interests it is very worthwhile them having some basic induction training that sets out the basic ground rules so that they understand that. They need to know, apart from anything else in their early days, possibly when to ask for advice. We are not talking about a great, long formal training course; we are saying a basic training. We acknowledge that a great deal can be done through mutual learning. It is a good idea, for example, for elected members to take part in organisations like the Town and Country Planning Summer School (a separate charity, I hasten to add) which has a very successful elected members school which gets about 400 elected members each year. It is really good - I do not say that in any patronising way - they have really good discussions and they help to develop each other's skills, knowledge and confidence.

Q147 Mr Hands: I am trying to think what you are trying to teach the local authority members. Is it more a kind of a procedural training: how do you deal with an applicant who approaches you and in what context should you or should you not meet with the applicant? Or how you should handle objectors. Is it very nitty-gritty training you are talking about?

Mr Upton: I think it has to do that but it has to do that in the context of what is this system and how does it work. If you do not have that context about what is a section 106 and things like that I think they will find it harder to relate to issues that an applicant might be raising which a member needs to be savvy about.

Q148 Mr Olner: My authority changed political culture at the district elections last Thursday, so is the new incoming portfolio holder, because he has not done an accredited course, not able to be that portfolio holder? It seems to me that you are setting up an obstacle. Nobody minds training; I have no problem with that at all, in fact I learned what I know when I was vice-chairman of planning from the chairman of the planning committee and the office is constantly updated on changes in planning law. I am just worried that you are starting to put a little wedge in there that says "without being accredited and without having been to a training school, you cannot be a member of a planning committee".

Mr Upton: No, we are not trying to go there at all. I am sure that the new portfolio holder will have the most excellent advice from his officers, all of whom I am sure are members of the Royal Town Planning Institute. I am arguing that it is in the interests of that portfolio holder and in the interests of public confidence frankly that at an early stage they should receive some training.

Q149 Chair: Apart from everything you have already talked about, one of the points raised by this inquiry in general is that the nature of planning has changed. Do you think the member training should also take account of that so that even people who have been on development control committees for some time may nevertheless need some sort of upgrade?

Mr Upton: Yes, we tried to make that point in the memorandum. For a start it is distressing that the focus is so much on development control. We have talked here about our attempts to develop good and effective practice in spatial planning, planning which is focused on good quality outcomes and the delivery of them. We think that that should be something which elected members are involved in as well. They should understand what can be achieved through this. We have examples which we can use. We say also that we think that one of the critical issues for the long term is really an issue of leadership. We are always moving into unchartered territory here and we think that the leaders of council and the senior officials should be taking part in a form of leadership training which looks to see what good spatial planning which brings together the actual local development framework, which brings together what will now be the community infrastructure levy and local area agreements, section 106 or whatever, what can be achieved for the people through that. Let us all raise our gaze here and see what we can achieve.

Chair: On that uplifting note, thank you very much; we will move onto the next set of witnesses.

Memoranda submitted by the South East England Development Agency and the Sustainable Communities Excellence Network

 

Witnesses: Mr Paul Lovejoy, Executive Director, Strategy and Communications, Ms Pat Tempany, Head of Urban Renaissance, Housing and Policy, Ms Miranda Pearce, Renaissance Manager, South-East England Development Agency and Mr Dominic Murphy, Executive Director, Sustainable Communities Excellence Network, gave evidence.

Q150 Chair: You were all here during the last evidence session. All I would say is, do not all feel obliged to answer every question, particularly if you are just going to say the same thing that somebody has already said. If there is a specific something that you want to add, then please indicate. I will start by asking you if you could maybe outline what you believe to be the most significant skill shortages and the action you are taking to address those shortages.

Ms Pearce: We have done some research over a number of years with professionals in the south-east region and also more recently with developers and councillors. There have been some consistent messages that have been coming through that research. The main skills challenges they face are around, as the last speaker said, leadership and vision, project management, development finance, urban design and increasingly sustainability. Those are a sort of package. Then along with that you have communication skills both cross-professional and cross-institutional communication. Community engagement and working with communities has always been and continues to be an important skill that everybody needs to have, from professional to councillor.

Mr Murphy: I represent the National Network of Regional Centres of Excellence. There are a couple of things I might add into that. We are particularly asked for expertise around climate change issues (individual local authorities requesting help around that issue) and the opportunity to get together with developers. You were talking in the other session about very early discussions about major planning proposals; those are the sorts of things they are looking for to gain an understanding from as well. That has come up in various regions across the country so it is quite consistent. I would also say that in the future community engagement is something we are just getting filtering through with planning departments starting to ask where they can get training and that is to do with the duty to involve in the Planning White Paper.

Ms Pearce: In terms of what we have been doing, we do not just target the planning professions specifically; we have particularly tried to bring together cross-professional organisations. Increasingly, certainly in our South East Excellence programme we are looking to bring together developers and councillors. To give an example, urban design has been one of the areas that consistently has been selected as an area where both sides of the planning debate - the private sector and the public sector - believe they need additional skills. In our region when SEEDA came into existence we established a number of infrastructure supports so we put in place a regional design review panel that complements the national panel that CABE delivers to which is now a model that has been taken up by other regions and promoted through CABE. We put in place what we call a design champion's club. When local authorities were asked to create a design champion in their organisation we thought it would be useful to bring them together so they could learn collectively and develop a peer network. Again that is something that has been taken up in a number of other regions. We also support our Architecture and Built Environment Centres which provide independent advice and often the first stage of that advice can be free to local authorities and to communities. They are then available as an independent consultancy resource for local authorities. More recently we have recognised that you need different levels of support, those who need to know basic information and those who almost need master classes in more detail and depth. We are working with Design for London and Inspire East which is the equivalent to us in the east of England to develop a new learning tool around urban design which will enable a large number of people to gather a basic understanding of urban design. At the same time we work with the Urban Renaissance Institute which is part of Greenwich University to deliver a series of master classes for those who perhaps need more detailed master class type advice and guidance. That is an example of what we have done in terms of the urban design skills shortages that have been with us for a while. We are currently in the process of looking at how we respond to the sustainability challenge, what is the package that we put in place to address that agenda.

Ms Tempany: Just picking up on something Miranda just said regarding the research that we have done in the south-east, that was focussed on looking at what the barriers were to delivery and looking at the skills and attributes that were needed by key decision makers. As Miranda said, that was identified as developers and council members. One of the things that they both said that came out of that was that they wanted more opportunities for engagement with each other so rather than formal training opportunities they wanted the opportunity to sit round a table, look at a development or talk about a development or go and see something and have that opportunity to talk to each other and learn from each other informally. I think whilst we are working in a formal way with some of them, they are also now looking to put more informal opportunities together so that they can learn from each other.

Q151 Mr Hands: I have a question for the SEEDA members and that is that you mentioned just now the research you commissioned last year and from our reading of the research it seems to suggest that the shortage of planning skills had a negative impact on the quality of development in the south east. What has caused that? Has it been the poor quality of decisions that have been made? Has it been perhaps the slowing down of the whole planning process or has it been perhaps over-hasty decision making? Can you go through what, in actual terms on a local authority basis, has led to this poor quality decision making?

Ms Pearce: I think a lot of the issues around quality come back to urban design and confidence amongst local authorities, both staff and members in their understanding of urban design. That has certainly led to some concerns. Also there is concern from a local authority side about the quality of the applications they receive. You are probably aware of the CABE research into the quality of housing where it showed that all developers can produce good schemes although they do not consistently produce good schemes. What they need is a council to challenge them to consistently produce good schemes. It is often the confidence in that language and the questions to ask to be able to challenge poor quality. Yes, there are issues about speed and there are issues about costs, but actually it is the confidence to challenge and the confidence to insist that is sometimes missing.

Q152 Chair: If a private developer can produce good quality, why would they not bother to do it all the time? Is it cheaper to produce poor quality?

Ms Pearce: Yes. It is sometimes easier and faster because they can take perhaps a standard house type and apply a standard house type to a particular patch. They do not necessarily have to give the detail that would give a local distinctiveness. In that respect design quality ultimately produces a good value scheme, but if it is easier and faster to do your standard product you will seek to do your standard product.

Q153 Mr Hands: I think your research also highlighted what, in your view, is a variability on local authority members. What do you think is causing that and what do you think could be done about it?

Ms Pearce: There are very many areas where there are differences. I think that was the main thing that came out. Part of our research involved three workshops with developers and councillors together. We thought it would be useful to hear from them what are the skills and attributes they thought the others needed and what they themselves thought they needed. What was coming through there was a variable practice across the region where some, for example, would meet regularly with developers and developer forums but others were not sure they should even be at the meeting with developers there. Again a lot of it comes back to confidence and knowledge. It is not necessarily an issue of specific technical training, it is having a general understanding and being clear what questions they should be asking, have a design check. Often the issue is: "What are the questions I should be asking? I do not need a detailed understanding of design; I need to know what questions I should be asking of an applicant or asking my team." A lot of it does come back to understanding the language, having confidence and understanding the other side. That is the other thing that came through consistently; both sides wanted to understand the drivers behind the other. The developers wanted to understand more about the political process and the context within which politicians were asked to work and the councillors really felt they needed to understand what makes a development work, how do developers make decisions about risk, but they never really got a chance to ask those questions of each other because there was always a concern about probity and whether they should be talking.

Q154 Mr Hands: Were those councillors members of the planning committee or chairs of the planning committee or were they principally councillors in charge, say, from an executive point of regeneration?

Ms Pearce: The majority of them were either committee chairs or members of the planning committee.

Q155 Mr Betts: What impact will the sub-national review have on local authorities in terms of the amount of work or the change in the nature of the work for planning members or for elected members?

Mr Lovejoy: In our view it will have a very substantial impact, the full scale and dimensions of which are still being worked through. Perhaps I could give you an illustration from the point of view of our organisation and the impact that it will have on us as a regional development agency. First of all, any involvement in the quasi judicial process of planning for appointed board members will certainly mean a very significant shift in the skills required and the job description that will be set on appointment for the board members. It will have an impact on the conduct of meetings. For example, most RDA board meetings are held in closed session; it is inconceivable that the planning process will be handled in closed session in our view. Turning to our professional skills, there will be a requirement for regional development agencies to either recruit or establish other access to direct professional skills that will allow them to complete a regional strategy. Our view is that that will require something in the region of 15 to 20 members of staff. Currently, for illustration, there are roughly five members of staff involved in similar work in the regional development agency. There is also alongside that team roughly 20 members of staff currently working in the regional assembly whose skills will be particularly needed. We are also clear, particularly in a region as large and diverse as the south-east, that it has often been the contribution made by local authority planning officers and indeed members that has been absolutely critical to the development and formulation of the strategy. We are looking at ways in which we can secure and perhaps invest that capacity at local authority level. So there is a very substantial impact, yes.

Q156 Mr Betts: There is no more work, is there? Is it about transferring people around?

Mr Lovejoy: In one sense in some areas you may see an opportunity for efficiencies, for example now that the regional development agency and the regional assembly are both statutory consultees on major planning applications. The regional assembly has a role with regard to conformity of local development frameworks whereas the regional development agency is a consultee. So you may see some slimming there. Certainly there is a need to move capacity from some centres to others. The big concern that I think is emerging very rapidly in the south-east is that given the uncertainty around some of the issues and the quite prolonged transition phase that we will see with the proposed run-out of assemblies after 2010 that a number of the skilled regional planners - of whom there are relatively few - will choose other options between now and 2010 leaving the regional planning body at 2010 in a difficult position in trying to take forward a regional strategy and having lost some of the skills and background that will be needed to make a success of it.

Q157 Mr Betts: Are you looking for extra funding for all of this or is it a matter of redirecting the money that is already there?

Mr Lovejoy: We believe it is the latter and we believe that provided the CLG are able to provide confirmation to regional development agencies that the funding that they currently provide to regional assemblies to fund the statutory planning process will be transferred from 2010 to regional development agencies then that will be sufficient to the task. The issue plays out differently in different regional development agencies. We are speaking for a regional development agency with a relatively small budget for whom the accommodation of these new capacities will be a significant issue. It will look differently to some of our colleagues in the Midlands and the northern regions where they are working with larger budgets and often with smaller numbers of local authorities.

Q158 Mr Hands: What would be your overall assessment of the performance so far of the Academy for Sustainable Communities? What do you think should be the priorities for its work?

Mr Murphy: I will deal with the last point first. I would like to just make the point that the regional centres of excellence - the regional centres that I am representing here - emerged out of the Rogers report so they well pre-date the Academy and they were to do with the Urban White Paper and what the Lord Rogers was talking about in terms of what then was a mainly re-generation and urban design issue. We have expanded into broader place making and sustainable communities work. We were around before but we did see a real opportunity with the creation of the Academy to deal with those things that are better dealt with at a national level. It is all very well operating regionally and being close to the practitioners, but things do come up where you need somebody who has access to the corridors of power. As Miranda was saying earlier, there is some really good practice in the south-east that we need a way of getting out quickly across the whole country. That would be a real help in delivering large schemes. There are a number of roles that an organisation like that could take on. We are hopeful that that can still be the case. I think that all of these things seem to always take longer than you hope when they are first set up. We have all worked with the Academy. The Academy is in touch with us and up until last year was helping us to do some of our national networking; we now do that on our own. It is fair to say that again it is work in progress and we are keen that we get a clear demarcation. I am aware of the fact that some people are concerned about duplication, if you have a national assembly and nine regional ones you have to be really careful not to duplicate what you are doing. I think we need to prioritise that sort of work as well and make sure we are clear what it is we want to do, be decided and clear at the region what it is.

Q159 Mr Hands: To summarise it, it is networking, exchange of best practice, that kind of thing. What about the statistic that only 1.3 per cent of the possible target audience had their training at least influenced by the ASC?

Mr Murphy: I saw that in the evidence. I do not know where that figure came from so I will not comment on that. What I would say is that the way to deal with that is to work through the regional centres, all of whom are practitioner networks in the thousands, so straightaway they have access to at least 20,000 real live practitioners working today, many of whom are planners - but not all - and are making on that whole place making issue. Some of them are private sector working in the private sector and some of them in the voluntary sector as well. I am not sure that that is the mission of the ASC to actually directly train a workforce.

Q160 Mr Hands: Having an impact on the training of practitioners I think is part of its mission statement.

Mr Murphy: How did they define having an impact?

Chair: It was indeed from the Academy of Sustainable Communities, that they influenced the learning of only 1.3 per cent.

Q161 Mr Hands: What about the other representatives? What are your views on the ASC?

Ms Pearce: As Dom said, we have been part of the excellence network from the start and certainly we have attended meetings with the chief executives and the Academy has been invited to attend those as well. We have received some funding from the Academy to deliver some projects. They are in the difficult position of being a relatively small organisation that is trying to talk to both the national agenda but also being respected and understood by the practitioners. That is always very difficult because you are looking both ways; you are trying to be strategic but you are also trying to provide practical support. I think certainly in the south east they have had a limited impact to date because they have had a limited involvement to date. Certainly we are very keen to work with them more constructively and we see that certainly going forward. We are hoping that the pilot that we are carrying out with the HCA will enable us to address our relationship in that way. We have benefited from their funding. They part-funded the research we referred to earlier bringing councillors and developers together. The Learning Laboratories Programme that they encouraged all the centres to take part in has been very successful and certainly in our region it has given us an idea of how we can move forward and do similar work in other parts of the region. I think all the centres have found that a very rewarding process and as a network we are looking at how we can learn from what each other has done. For example, in the east there was a very interesting diagnosis process working with a number of local authorities and that is something we would be interested to try in the south east. So they have provided an environment in which we can innovate and experiment as network members. Perhaps where it has been less clear what they have been doing - although I imagine they have been doing something - is at the national level where they have perhaps been influencing some of the strategic players, the sector skills bodies, professional institutes and other bodies such as Atlas and IDA. We are not best placed to answer to those relationships, but certainly in terms of regional relationships I think it is something that is developing and could potentially be very fruitful going forward.

Q162 Chair: Can I just pick up a couple of issues which have come up in the evidence? What relationship do your bodies have with the various professional bodies, the RTPI is one but the other professional bodies as well?

Ms Pearce: We have various relationships with the professional bodies. Through SEEDA we have spent a number of years trying to bring the professional institutes together, trying to encourage pan-professional learning. We supported, mainly driven by the South East Centre for the Environment working very closely with RTPI and RIBA (who have been some of the biggest collaborators in our region), we encouraged them and gave them some funding to start to bring together a common CPD website which enabled all the institutes to put CPD programmes available onto a common source which I think is now rolled our nationally. We have also encouraged them, through small amounts of money, to come together and look at how they can plan joint CPD activity so that members from RIBA, RTPI, RICS, CIOB et cetera can come to events and that is something we are taking forward now, trying to get a common memorandum of understanding between in the region of 16 of those organisations. It is a model that has worked very well in the north-west and in the east of England, again through the Centre of Excellence Network and we are building on that expertise and are trying to push it into our region. There we want them to collaborate, to plan CPD provision and in our case we would try to encourage them to look at CPD provision that addresses the eight components of the Egan wheel. For example, they might collectively look at housing issues and then equity and economic development, but do it in the context of joint professional learning. So far it is positive. We have a number of the chairs who want to come to a common signing and certainly historically we have had very successful events, particularly held between RIBA and RTPI looking at issues of sustainability, for example. There are good examples of collaboration in the region and that is what we are trying to encourage, to bring them together, to let them talk to each other and then from that to spin out and develop their longer term relationships. As an RDA and centre of excellence we see a lot of our role as actually building cross-professional relationships to enable people to work through themselves to sustain those relationships.

Q163 Chair: Did you want to add anything else?

Mr Murphy: I think that is a really good answer by Miranda. I would just say that right across the regions there are examples of working across a professional institute. Certainly in our region I taught on the RTPI CPD programme which just rolls through the year. They contact us and ask us if there is anything we particularly would like to get included in their programme and similarly with RICS as well. They are part of our network basically and we have regular discussions at the regional level and also make sure that there is representation on those bodies on our governing bodies as well because that is good when you are having strategic discussions about where you are going to go next.

Chair: Thank you all very much indeed.