House of Commons - Communities and Local Government Committee

Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee Eleventh Report

3 The skills gap

Improvement is needed in both technical and generic skills such as development appraisal skills so as to negotiate S106 agreements, climate change mitigation and how to use evidence-based approaches to inform forward planning as well as financial and project management skills, decision-making, analytical evaluation skills.—Communities and Local Government.[119]

54. The ASC last year reported that 10 per cent of organisations it had surveyed believed they required improvements in technical skills. Among individuals surveyed, however, half thought their specialist skills needed improvement, and many planners felt they would be more confident in using their generic skills—in negotiating Section 106 agreements, for example—if their underlying technical skills were better.[120] The ASC was created in 2005 as a result of the key recommendations in the Egan Review, which had identified a shortage of 'generic' skills—things like governance, negotiation and partnership working rather than technical knowledge of planning law or land use—as the central problem facing the entire sustainable communities workforce, of which planning is a small but vital part. Discussion about whether it is technical or generic skills that are most lacking continues, but is to some extent a side issue—local authorities contain professionals other than planners who may most appropriately and effectively conduct, for example, negotiations on the level of section 106 payments. The point is that both technical and generic skills are in short supply in certain areas of planning and in need of continuous improvement across the board.

55. The Egan Review recognised that existing specialist skills required for professions including planning were vital, but argued that a wider engagement with the work of creating sustainable communities relied on planners also attaining new 'generic' skills. "For some local authority staff this will require new skills and ways of working that emphasise team effort, shared values and delivery of common goals."[121] The Audit Commission has amplified the point, noting the need for planners to interact increasingly with other professionals as councils move away from narrow land use planning towards the more 'spatial', 'place-shaping' approach ushered in since 2004: "it is softer skills, such as the ability to negotiate and communicate, not technical skills, that are at a premium. There is a general lack of people with the appropriate skills to fill this role."[122]

56. Of course, generic skills cannot be entirely divorced from the technical subject matter that is the business of planning: the Planning Inspectorate, for example, has identified five specific areas in which skills are short in both respects—site assembly and finance; environmental impact assessment regulations; renewable energy and climate change targets; Design and Access statements; and the new LDF.[123] The ASC has further highlighted targets for new homes, regeneration in growth areas and eco-towns as areas in which "people with the right skills, knowledge and leadership capability will be in high demand."[124] And Asset Skills, in effect the sector skills council for planners, also stresses leadership, while adding negotiation, brokerage and management to the package of skills required of the 21st century planner. The point is that planners well versed in the techniques of their trade need wider leadership, management and negotiation skills if they are to shape their areas fully, using their strategic skills to drive local regeneration. These skills need in turn to be built on a new confidence among planners themselves in their own power to design and follow through on a vision for their localities following the 2004 shift towards spatial planning.

The cross-cutting, inter-disciplinary approach

57. Sir John Egan pressed for the "establishment of integrated cross-cutting teams within local authorities to oversee implementation of major projects" as one means of widening the generic skill sets of planners and other sustainable communities professionals, a suggestion most recently backed by John Calcutt in his 2007 review of house-building delivery.[125]

58. There are difficulties in this approach, however—the previous chapter's points about the reduction in status of the Chief Planning Officer are predicated substantially on the maintenance of difference for that post rather than its integration into a wider role encompassing economic regeneration, environmental services, transport, investment and more. The ASC has noted that such integration would imply changes in the way planners and others are educated and trained and a considerable culture change.[126] It is also possible, however, that a stronger Chief Planning Officer would mean that the place of the planning function within such a wider role is clearer.

The culture shift since 2004

59. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 caused much technical planning work to be done at the routine level—house extensions and the like—but has created new pressures on officers at the level of the large application. The Audit Commission notes that a major development is likely to involve co-ordination of the input of the following parties:

the developer who wants to build (the applicant), council planners; councillors (the planning authority); neighbours (third parties); local and national pressure groups (third parties); council departments, for example, housing, leisure and social services (internal consultees); external agencies, for example the Environment Agency, Highways Agency and English Heritage (statutory consultees); the council's solicitors; and the developer's solicitors.[127]

On the ground, this has faced senior planners with increasing challenges, to which they have begun to rise. As Lindsay Frost, head of planning at Lewes District Council, told us:

I think there has been some progress since [Egan's] report in 2004, for example on project management through the local development scheme system… We are also getting a clearer idea in the profession on some financial management, financial appraisal issues, which particularly crop up in big, complex, mixed-use developments.[128]

60. That said, significant gaps in skills remain to be addressed if planning officers are to gain the confidence to provide the proactive vision and leadership required to shape their communities. The POS identifies the planning of infrastructure as a key new field, consequent on the wider view that 'spatial' planning of an entire area requires.[129] This requirement will take centre stage as the proposals in the 2007 Review of Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration are implemented. The RTPI's south-east branch and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) both highlight design skills, the latter pointing out that fewer than half of local authorities have a qualified urban designer in their planning departments while 86 per cent of local planning authorities state that they need further design skills.[130] The Environment Agency stresses a shortage of climate change-related skills.[131]

61. PAS/IDeA see a need for planners to identify with the 'intelligent client':

To be able to specify, commission and complete the client side of a contractual relationship requires a combination of the skills that are already evidently in short supply—project management, performance management—combined with a clear view of what is required.[132]

This finds an echo on the development side of the fence, where there is greater concern about finance-related skills. The BPF notes:

Two general areas where the private sector's view is that local planning authorities do not fully understand the perspective of a commercial developer are the financial costs of delay to a scheme and the level of profit that is required to make a scheme financially viable.[133]

62. PAS/IDeA also identify project and performance management as significant gaps, a point of particular importance given increasing reliance on external consultants for both routine and more specialised work.[134] The POS, too, accepts that the employment of private consultancy firms exposes significant gaps in public sector management skills:

The public sector is not good at using consultants. They are not skilled at drawing up specifications, performance managing them, ensuring they are delivered to cost time and making sure they get effective use of the money and judging what the amount of money is to do the piece of work they are asking for.[135]

Lindsay Frost concurs, recognising that employment of consultants is a senior managerial responsibility in "an area of work that comes to us now which did not come in the past".

63. Mr Frost adds, however, that the key to doing that work well lies in asking and having answered the right sets of questions.[136] Indeed, that ability to ask the right question underlies a great deal of the skills gap that planners fear they suffer—on infrastructure planning, on development economics, on climate change and on virtually every sustainable communities issue that now crosses desks within the local authority planning department. As Miranda Pearce, Renaissance Manager of the South-East of England Development Agency (SEEDA), told us, this comes down to officers having the wider confidence to back their technical knowledge:

What [developers] 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.[137]

Community Infrastructure Levy

64. The Planning Bill, currently passing through Parliament, proposes the introduction of a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), posing new challenges for planning departments. Local authorities could apply the CIL to new developments in their areas with the intention of funding some, if not all, the infrastructure the development would require. This will, at the simplest, require the identification of such infrastructure, the cost of installing or upgrading it and the negotiating skills to obtain a suitable contribution from the developer. The POS, noting that application of the CIL may open up the planning system to participation by new players from, for example, the health service or the emergency services, raises the concern that the necessary skills may be "in short supply within the planning profession and beyond".[138] The BPF has raised similar concerns from the development side, and pointed to significant variation in performance on the negotiation of Section 106 agreements, which may result in infrastructure funding being lost.

Local Development Frameworks

65. A further challenge to local authority planning departments has been the need to produce LDFs under the changes ushered in since 2004. These replaced the previous single local plan with a high-level core strategy for the local area, supported where necessary by lower-level development plan documents intended to deliver it. The switch to LDF has caused some anger among planners themselves: Lindsay Frost of Lewes District Council told us they had written off much experience built up over the previous three decades.[139] CLG reports that around a fifth of the LDFs have been or are likely to be submitted behind schedule while a quarter of those submitted have been found "unsound" by the Planning Inspectorate or withdrawn.[140] CLG puts these failures down to "an underestimate (by ourselves and local government) of the cultural change required for local planning authorities and key stakeholders to deliver".[141] The Planning Inspectorate suggests some authorities have produced 'unsound' plans because they produced their documents in an "illogical sequence", which itself resulted from their "still coming to terms with spatial planning and LDFs".[142] The introduction of LDFs and the planning development documents required for them marked a significant culture shift in local planning departments for which they have proven ill-equipped. CLG needs to provide support to those authorities that have struggled to produce their Local Development Frameworks on time or to the standard required by the Planning Inspectorate and to ensure in future that any such wide-ranging shift is backed by the resources necessary to train officers adequately in what is being required of them.

Planning Delivery Grant and training

66. The Government has supplied local authorities with substantial funding in the form of PDG, which is tied to the achievement of time-related targets. Since 2003-04, some £605 million has been allocated to local authorities, and the grant will transform into the Housing and PDG in future with £510 million allocated over the next Comprehensive Spending Review Period, 2008-09 to 2010-11.[143] Interestingly, comparatively little of this substantial funding has been spent by local authorities on training their staff: in 2005-06, for example, just £1.6 million of PDG money—about 1 per cent of that year's total—went that way.[144] While the fact that the grant is tied to performance may suggest that the authorities who receive the most require the least in training support, there may be scope for requiring more of the grant to support improvement in skills. The Government has put significant funding into Planning Delivery Grant to local authorities. Given the skills shortages across the planning sector, there may be a case for tying some of that funding to raising skills levels by requiring increased training and development opportunities among those authorities who receive it.

Skills training

67. The RTPI, which accredits university and other courses for planners, believes that the "development of skills absolutely rests on a bedrock of education".[145] The previous chapter of this Report considered the role of university courses for undergraduates and postgraduate students. This section will consider on-the-job training, or continuing professional development.

68. Local authority reluctance to spend PDG on training for its staff appears to be matched by a lack of investment of other resources in CPD. RTPI General Secretary Robert Upton told us that there was no shortage of courses available for in-work planners seeking to improve their skills, but "a pitifully small amount" of money available in some authorities to pay for them.[146] Tim Edmundson of the University of Westminster points out that the average London Borough has a training budget of about £650 per officer while a single seminar or conference will cost between £400 and £700.[147] The RTPI represents a general view in saying: "Local Government is either not a sufficiently willing or a sufficiently able customer for continuing professional or other skills development."[148]

69. Quite apart from local authority resourcing, the UWE believes that there is little professional incentive for planners themselves to invest their time in gaining additional qualifications since little financial reward or direct promotion results from their attainment.[149] Officers are often promoted on qualifying for membership of the RTPI, their professional body, but this generally happens early and is not a direct result of educational attainment.

70. The BPF, which represents private sector developers, is particularly keen on the idea of cross-secondments between the private and public sectors: the former gain knowledge of how the planning process works on the local government side while the latter gain experience in, for example, the economics of development.[150]

119 Ev 96 Back

120 Academy for Sustainable Communities, Mind the Skills Gap, p. 45. Back

121 ODPM, The Egan Review, p. 34. Back

122 Audit Commission, The Planning System, p. 34. Back

123 Ev 120-22 Back

124 Ev 136 Back

125 ODPM, The Egan Review, p. 40; the Calcutt Review of Housebuilding Delivery, November 2007, p. 82. Back

126 Ev 157-58 Back

127 Audit Commission, The Planning System, p24. Back

128 Q 27 Back

129 Ev 54 passim Back

130 Ev 63-64 and Ev 67 Back