House of Commons - Communities and Local Government Committee

Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee Eleventh Report

4 Agents for delivery

I think some alignment is worth looking at to make sure that we are not just creating organisations for the sake of it, and just ending up with lots of different voices all on the same issue.—rt Hon. Caroline Flint MP, Minister for Housing.[151]

71. The Minister for Housing's remark above reflects the fact that very many agencies, governmental and non-governmental, public and private, feed into the provision both of planners and the skills they possess. During the course of our inquiry we identified the following list of players at work in this field:

the Department for Communities and Local Government;
the Homes and Communities Agency;
the Academy of Sustainable Communities;
the Advisory Team for Large Applications;
the Planning Advisory Service;
the Improvement & Development Agency for Local Government;
the Planning Officers Society;
the Asset Skills Council;
the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment;
the Local Government Association;
the Planning Summer School;
Regional Centres of Excellence;
Regional Development Agencies;
the Urban Design Alliance;
various planning schools and private sector bodies; and
professional organisations such as the Royal Town Planning Institute.

The RTPI, among others, suggests that there may simply be too many bodies operating within the field, stating that "there is inevitably some duplication of effort […] not least because some of these bodies perceive themselves to be in competition rather than alliance".[152] This chapter considers the roles and activities of the principal agencies created following the Egan Review and co-ordinated by CLG.

Academy for Sustainable Communities

72. The main outcome of the 2004 Egan review was the establishment in 2005 of the Academy for Sustainable Communities as a national centre for skills across the sustainable communities sphere. Egan recommended, among other things, that the centre:

provide a high-profile national focus for sustainable community skills development and research, and

act as a resource and communications hub for individuals, organisations and communities working in the sustainable communities agenda (Recommendation 22).

The ASC describes its activities as follows:

We raise awareness of sustainable communities;

We help build capacity by giving existing professionals new skills, and by encouraging others to take up relevant careers;

We set standards and improve professional performance by highlighting and sharing examples of good practice;

We influence policy;

We work with organisations critical to the success of future communities.[153]

CLG, as the Academy's parent Department, has also set it priorities for 2007-08:

to become a recognised 'kitemarking' body for skills and knowledge related to place-making and sustainable communities; establishing programmes for professionals; improving the understanding between the private and public sectors; continuing to influence positively the work of other bodies; providing active, practical learning through national action projects and regional learning laboratories.[154]

73. The ASC appears to have got off to a slow start in its efforts to spread knowledge on sustainable communities. Its memorandum to our inquiry states:

From a standing start in 2006 with a budget of £12.739m over our first two years of operation, ASC has influenced the learning of 10,000 professionals. This amounts to 1.3% of the sustainable communities workforce.[155]

ASC chairman Professor Peter Roberts OBE when he appeared before the Committee updated those figures to 24,000 people, representing about 3 per cent of the target workforce.[156] He repeated, too, that the ASC had been in action for two years: "the Academy started in full operation in May 2006". [emphasis added]. [157] A supplementary memorandum supplied after Professor Roberts gave evidence uses a similar formulation: "Since becoming fully operational in spring 2006".[158] In fact, the ASC was created in mid-2005, as is confirmed by CLG's memorandum to our inquiry.[159]It did not have a "standing start" in 2006 and it should not claim that it did.

74. The fact that the Academy for Sustainable Communities—the national centre responsible for skills in the field—has, at a time of substantial labour and skills shortages, reached only 3 per cent of the sustainable communities workforce in three years' work at a cost of more than £13 million does not appear to match the objective set by the Egan Review of achieving a "high-profile national focus for sustainable community skills development and research". We recommend that CLG undertake and publish an impact assessment of the ASC's first three years' work programme.

75. The ASC has produced some significant work since 2006, notably its Mind the Skills Gap report, which has been referred to frequently in this Report, a new Foundation Degree in Sustainable Communities available from January this year, and curriculum support materials for schools, which it says more than 74,000 young people and 3,000 teachers have had access to.[160]It is currently re-conducting the research on which Mind the Skills Gap was based to take account of Comprehensive Spending Review changes and new Government targets, notably for house-building, and the data it provides will be vital in identifying areas where the gaps are greatest and where most action is required. The Academy has been more successful in fulfilling its role as an identifier of skills gaps across the Sustainable Communities workforce. We urge CLG to use the Academy's forthcoming revision of its data on the skills gap among planners and other sustainable communities professions to establish a detailed action plan to fill those gaps.

76. Professor Roberts told us that the ASC's tasks included "establishing meaningful and productive partnerships with all the other agencies and organisations involved in delivery of professionals and other people working on sustainable communities":[161]

We have worked with people like Constructing Excellence, we have worked with people like Encams, we have worked with people like the Landscape Institute, the Landscape Architects, the Institution of Economic Development, the Chartered Institute of Housing and so on, and these people have signed commitments. We have developed and delivered.[162]

The ASC has also clearly worked with organisations such as Sheffield Hallam University to start up the Foundation Degree already referred to, and it rightly points out that developing such programmes takes time if they are to be effective and credible with, for example, professional bodies such as the RTPI.[163]

77. Even so, the ASC has not clearly established among all interested parties a clear picture of what it is for and what it does. From the private development sector, Liz Peace, the BPF chief executive, was "doubtful that the Academy for Sustainable Communities has so far made a real difference". Nor have the ASC's public sector regional partners been entirely convinced as yet: Dominic Murphy, Executive Director of the Sustainable Communities Excellence Network, which represents England's regional centres of excellence, said its establishment had created a real opportunity to provide a national focus: "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."[164] But his colleague, Miranda Pearce, Renaissance Manager at SEEDA, was uncertain that this had translated into real national influence:

Perhaps where it has been less clear what they have been doing—although I imagine that they have been doing something—is at the national level where they have perhaps been influencing some of the strategic players.[165]

78. Several regional bodies have suggested that problems with strategic leadership and co-ordination and collaboration between agencies operating at the national level has necessitated innovative regional and sub-regional level joint approaches. The Regional Centres of Excellence outline several such model initiatives in their memorandum to our inquiry. SEEDA/SE Excellence refer to the 'Making Places Programme' which brings together CLG-sponsored agencies—ATLAS, CABE, IDeA and PAS—to ensure a collaborative, integrated and timely approach from these agencies to local authorities in the south-east.[166] SEEDA also refers to the roll-out of IDeA's programme for 'Effective democracy for elected members in Growth Areas.[167]

ASC and the Homes and Communities Agency

79. The ASC will soon be absorbed into the Government's planned new housing and regeneration delivery arm, the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). The new body was announced in January 2007 after a review of the Department's housing and regeneration delivery identified significant overlap between the work of English Partnerships (EP) and the Housing Corporation (HC).[168] The new body will be large—total expenditure by EP and the HC in 2005-06 amounted to £2.2 billion, and total net assets were £1.6 billion. The new agency will be responsible for, among other things, Decent Homes, Housing Market Renewal and urban regeneration programmes.

80. The ASC, with its 20 staff and £5.5 million a year budget, will be a small part of the HCA's empire, but the move is intended to increase its influence.[169] Negotiations continue about precisely how the relationship will work: the ASC hopes to retain its 'identity and brand', and David Morris, Deputy Director of Planning, Delivery and Performance at CLG, said the Government hoped the greater weight of the new parent body will "give the ASC more input … into the work on the ground and possibly greater focus on what it does as part of that process".[170] Giving evidence to us in February after he was appointed to head the HCA, Sir Bob Kerslake said that he wanted to see whether the ASC could be more strongly focused and to ask whether it could assist "more directly in places where there are particular issues, either about the absolute number of people with the right skills or with the ability to work collaboratively across different professional disciplines."[171]

81. We take the comments of Mr Morris and Sir Bob Kerslake to mean that the ASC's shift into the HCA is likely to mean some refocusing of its priorities. Currently, it concentrates on promotion of skills; greater attention is required to the problem of raising the number of planners. Sir Bob also told us in February that the ASC "can and should be" assessing whether skills shortages are "proving a barrier to progress".[172] We agree with what appears to be a clear implication from CLG and the new head of the Homes and Communities Agency that the Academy for Sustainable Communities should focus its attention more clearly on what can be done to address shortages of personnel as well as on improving skills. We recommend that such a shift of emphasis be confirmed in the terms under which the ASC becomes part of the HCA in the near future.

Planning Advisory Service

82. PAS was launched by ODPM (CLG's predecessor Department) in December 2004 with the specific goal of helping local government planning departments improve their service. Unlike the ASC, it has regular impact assessments conducted on its work to date, with fairly positive results. Some 90 per cent of authorities are aware of its work and positive satisfaction with the information and service it provides is at 91 per cent. More significantly, two thirds of those who receive advice or support from PAS report that they have changed their service as a result.[173]

Advisory Team for Large Applications

83. ATLAS was also created by ODPM in 2004 to provide local authorities and the private sector with advice on the planning process for major projects, such as those involving more than 500 homes. It, too, has earned credit for its work to date, but that work has been restricted only to southern England and has involved it with only a quarter of the planning authorities even there.[174] CLG has provided £6.5 million for its work.[175]

Improved co-ordination

84. Both bodies have provided valuable aid to both local planners and developers. Neither is directly charged with increasing either the number of planners or their skills, although the collateral effect of the work they do is likely to do both. The question is whether they, in addition to the ASC, should operate as separate bodies under diverse leads in related but different parts of the planning delivery field. ATLAS itself recognised "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."[176] PAS also noted "confusion amongst planners and councillors as to who is providing what support, what is available and who can access it".[177] And the Minister for Housing thought that "some alignment is worth looking at to make sure that we are not just creating organisations for the sake of it, and just ending up with lots of different voices all on the same issue."[178] The ASC, too, calls for "greater national co-ordination and coherence in the approach adopted to developing the workforce of the future."[179] We believe that greater co-ordination is required of the various agencies created in the wake of the Egan Review to improve the performance of local planning authorities. The ASC, PAS and ATLAS currently perform different but overlapping roles, leading to some confusion about who, precisely, is responsible for skills in the sector. We recommend that the Homes and Communities Agency—itself being created to co-ordinate the different but overlapping roles of English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation—be charged with co-ordinating this work and establishing a single agency—in effect a sector skills council for planning—tasked with delivering the required number of planners with the required skills.