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Putting planning first: culture in the planning profession

Tony McNulty MP: Speech

LGA Conference: Putting Planning First, Culture Change for the Planning Profession (31 March 2003)

1. Introduction

I want to thank the LGA, for organising this conference today on this important subject.
It is easy to knock culture change as meaningless management jargon or motherhood and apple pie platitudes, or both. Actually it is crucial to successful planning reform.
Cultural change permeates every single aspect of our approach to planning reform. We have to reform the way we go about planning as well as reforming the system itself.
Planning is a vehicle which cannot be fixed only by looking at its engine. You need to change the way the machine is driven.

2. Culture Change

We are all aware of the issues we need to address:
Vacancies and skill shortages in planning departments.
The important education and training issues identified in the RTPI Education Commission's report.
The drip feed of assertion and prejudice - which most emphatically I do not share - that planning is part of the problem not part of the solution.

[personal experience from serving on planning committee?]

I want to see a situation where:
Councils and local communities automatically look to planning as the means to enable them to achieve change at the local level.
Planning services are spoken of as excellent public services.
Planners are proud to speak about what they do.
When planning is part of the solution.
We have been talking to a lot of people over the last months on the agenda for culture change.
A consensus has emerged that we have to do four things:
Set out a vision for planning which can inspire and engage.
Deal with the issues of skills, to enhance capability and morale.
Raise the profile of planning in local authority policy making and governance.
Promote and encourage community involvement in planning

3. Vision for Planning

Planning is a crucial tool supporting and promoting sustainable development.
Planning is a creative, proactive mechanism which communities can use to help shape their destinies.
The remit of planning must be grounded in land use and development. But the spatial approach is about taking a broad view of how policy impacts can affect, and be affected by, land use decisions; about integrating the different demands for land use coherently; and giving expression on the ground to Community Strategies, for example.
Planning is a regulatory process and like any regulatory process, it has to address efficiency, consistency, accountability and transparency.
But let's think about this not as development 'control', which implies a reactive, negative, tick box approach; but as development 'management', a dynamic, proactive approach, which is there to facilitate and enable.
Yet, despite the importance of what planning does, as a country we allowed ourselves to get into a situation where the planning system was no longer delivering a sufficiently fair, predictable or efficient service; where planning is seen as part of the problem, not part of the solution. I accept that in the past, Government has talked down planning.
How do we encapsulate the vision for planning?
We have not put forward a statutory purpose for planning in the Bill as some have suggested.
Instead, Clause 38 sets out the strategic objective for regional and local plans - to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development.
This is a practical way forward. It will set a challenge and a clarion call for policy makers.
As an example, the Sustainable Communities Plan sets out our plans for how we can meet the housing problems in the country in a sustainable way.
Let's focus on practical action like this rather than getting bogged down in arguments over the words in the Bill and in trying to come up with complex definitions which, inevitably, will get out of date as thinking on the concept and application of sustainable development evolves over time.

4. The Bill and Culture Change

Much of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill is of course about the nuts and bolts of the planning process.
The Bill promotes the vision I have set out. Besides Clause 38:
The spatial planning approach in the Regional Spatial Strategy and at the local level. These changes will, I believe, make planning more dynamic because they will emphasise the need to focus on planning outcomes, integration and a holistic approach.
Providing new, flexible tools for local planning authorities to use - Local Development Orders, for example. The argument about Statements of Development Principles has all been about the comparison with Outline planning permission. Well SODPs in themselves are a tool to focus pre application discussions.
What we are doing to promote community involvement - the Statements of Community Involvement, but also the powers we are taking to make grants to bodies like Planning Aid.
Culture change means making effective, creative use of these changes, not always looking to live in the comfort zone of a rigid, inflexible planning system.

5. Culture Change and Capacity Building

Reform will help promote culture change but we have to strengthen the capacity of planners, stakeholders and the wider public to engage positively in the planning system.
The Government has listened to your worries about resources. We have more than met your concerns - £50 million this year; more than double that in the two years thereafter.
To achieve the planning reforms, we need a process which provides local authority planning departments with people competent to do the job. A basic building block has to be the education and training of planners.
Planning skills is just one strand of ODPM's work on skills. That's why we will be announcing a comprehensive skills strategy, which will draw all of these strands together, in the summer.
We welcome the RTPI's initiative in setting up an Education Commission under the Chairmanship of Professor Peter Fidler and its report.
The report rightly recognises that the world has moved on and that the old ways of educating planners will not meet the challenges planning faces.
I do not want to anticipate the debate on the report but I would like to offer some views on key principles.
The objectives must be to attract more people into planning in the first place, or back to planning; to offer them more attractive career routes; to provide for flexible routes into and through the planning system; and to provide the incentives and tools to promote continuing development of skills.
The Government would want to see many more flexible routes into and through the profession. We cannot have artificial barriers to entry or advancement.
We should recognise that there are generic skills which planners can gain from a range of backgrounds, which can then be built on and developed in the planning context. And that should be looked at in the context of practice, not just academic study.
Generic skills, augmented by programmes which enable planners to develop specialist areas of planning knowledge, will promote the concept of planning as a co-ordinating and strategic activity with plans informed by the professional contribution of many specialist disciplines.
I agree wholeheartedly with the importance of lifelong learning and continuing professional development. For any profession worth its salt, a "single educational experience" at the beginning of a practitioners professional life cannot equip that person for the rest of their professional life.
I am pleased the RTPI wishes to promote technical membership and the role of planning technicians.
Planning technicians can play very important roles, and we should encourage training and career progression which enables them to develop their skills, including to chartered status.
A coherently organised training and qualification system for Planning Technicians should provide a pathway for people who have not had the opportunity to access higher education.
And we must look to broaden diversity in the planning profession - to ensure the system provides opportunities for under represented sections of the community.
Planning education and training is not just an issue for professional planners.
The concept of life-long learning also applies to Councillors, the public and private Sector, children and young people and the general public. We have to promote a better understanding of the planning system.
For instance, the idea of influencing the development of their area should be an inspiring thought for young people. We are keen to explore ways we can introduce planning concepts into the curriculum.
There are many challenges here.
How can the extra resources from the Planning Delivery Grant assist?
The grant is not ring fenced, so local authorities can pool resources to support schemes now if they wish.
The proposals for CPD challenge the government, local authorities and other employers of planners to support planners in undertaking their CPD obligations.
There is much work to be done in preparing a coherent CPD strategy, which covers the whole country using the medium of short courses and distances learning packages.

6. Conclusion

We want to work with partners to raise the profile and inform the public of the value and benefits of the planning system.
A more flexible, more responsive planning system will be delivered not through the dusty volumes of policy sitting on the shelf, but through a motivated, empowered and more highly skilled planning profession.
This is an exciting, challenging time for planning and an unprecedented opportunity for planners to be right at the heart of creating sustainable communities for tomorrow.

ENDS