Working As A Town Planner

Who do town planners work for?

The opportunities for working in planning are many and varied. There is clearly the statutory process through which planning applications pass, and that is operated by local planning authorities, by national parks planning boards that have planning powers, by some development agencies, particularly in the areas of regeneration, so there is a local, formal, public opportunity to work in planning. But increasingly, planners are working in the private sector. So, they are working for the development industry, the house builders, the people who invest in industrial estates, and all of that range of development activity. So, there's the balance: public - private, which is tipped in favor of the private sector. There's government agencies, there are development agencies, national, international development agencies, and there are multinational companies that will see the benefits of having a planner on their team. So, the opportunities are quite wide. And, because of that, there is this scarcity at the moment of having enough planners available to do all that's necessary, and in the south-east in particular, many local planning authorities are recruiting from agencies who are bringing in planners from around the world. So, you go to a London borough to put your planning application in, and you note there's a distinctive accent in the person behind the counter who's somebody here on a short-term contract, qualified in planning perhaps in New Zealand or Canada or Australia or Eastern Europe, and here they are working in the United Kingdom, partly because it's a wonderful experience for them as planners to come to this centre of planning activity and then pursue their career wherever after that time.

What roles do planners fulfil?

If a planner is involved in working for local authority, there maybe too particular areas in witch they are focused. One would been policy formulations so the authorities sets out what its strategy is for the years ahead; what are its needs, how its going to meet those needs and works through that in its formulation of its local development framework. The other large group of planners will be those handling the day to day planning applications as they come in; the small scale or medium scale even the big projects - all coming trough and linked to that are any appeals that the authority might having to deal with. That said, within the local authority, you may find planners also working in other departments. In particular the Chief Executive Department may have a separate policy unit - so the skills that they would bring to the policy formulation in a local plan are applied to the authorities strategies overall for community engagement, for leisure development, how it spends its budget. In addition, one area planners have been drawn into is the regeneration area where communities are busy looking into what they need to cope with the demands that they suffering and have the composition themselves to improve, to regenerate their areas, to deal with the issues of depravation, to bring in money from Central Government if that is supporting programs. So those are the work areas for a planner in the public sector, planners also who works in local regional offices of Government, they work within the Government itself, advising Secretaries of State on work the planning issues they might be tackling. Within the private sector, consultancies may work on multi disciplinary teams so they can develop project ideas, build the case because some planning applications have a mountain of work supporting these major projects that bring together all of the issues, sustainability issues, the ecological issues, the design issues, the land contamination. Planners are very often coordinating their work to bring it all to the point where the planning applications are ready to be submitted.

Do you work in particular parts of the country as a town planner?

Work of a Town Planner or planning consultant basically revolves around the place he lives. But if he has clients further from his living area, then there is a case that he has to go their site to complete their work. This will probably depend upon the client.

Do town planners work internationally?

Some of our planning profession work is done on overseas development. So they may work for consultancies or even as individuals on government commissions going anywhere within the world to help on particular projects. We've got members of our professional institution who are based around the world. Something like 1,500 of our members are overseas members. There are strong bases in places like Hong Kong. There are planning institutes in Poland—one of the oldest ones; there's one in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and America. We're also in contact with them and at the last United Nations Habitat in Vancouver, where I was fortunate to be present to represent the Royal Town Planning Institute, it became very clear the contribution that spatial planning can take on a worldwide basis to tackle the issues of climate control, disaster planning, and urbanization. We've now just passed the point where there are more people living in urban areas around the world than there are living in rural areas. And that brings its own problems because the rate of urbanization is faster than the ability of the authorities to be able to deal with the issues it raises in terms of sanitation, drainage, and accommodation for those people. So there's some very big issues that planners around the world need to bear down on. Next year in 2008, in Beijing, the next UN Habitat and the Worldwide Planners Network is already coordinating its activities in order to be able to take the next step along that route. Our planning convention in London this year and Doctor Anna Debeanca from UN Habitat speak very highly of her regard for what planners are doing. It's good to know that.

Do all town planners work in towns?

Do all town planners work in towns? Of course, the profession calls itself a "town and country planning", so the implication of that is that no, they don't all work in towns. They work in cities, they work in rural areas, and they also work in areas of outstanding natural beauty. There are town planners working for organizations like The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, because they have special planning issues that they can see the skills of a planner will help with. The opportunities as to where you work and what you work on are quite varied. Some planners make a specialism of things like minerals and waste and work for companies that are involved in quarry excavations and the reinstatement of the land afterwards, landfill operations and how those can be reclaimed for community benefit and recreation purposes. There's a vast range of opportunities out there.

Do town planners focus on particular types of development?

The planning consultant can specialize themselves in a particular area in their field. Many planning consultancies are emerging to provide support for retail activities, both in town centers and chain of supermarkets, who are anxious to spend money for their expansion. These companies spend most of the time with planning consultant's by going through demographics, and also do a lot of number crunching, which helps them to make decisions corresponding to the retail activities they want to improve or invest on. The National House Building corporation also have a team of planners to determine where the next house building needs are arising, and how fast the house build rates are meeting the demands? They also try to tackle issues about affordable housing and also issues concerned with the design and energy conservation related to housing. Taking into consideration all these factors, the appearance of the house is the most important factor that increases its market value.

How many planning applications do you work on in a week?

In terms of the workload on Planning Applications, it's difficult to be perspective as to how much an individual case officer would have as the current workload. If they're working in a dense urban area and there was a lot of hassle on their Applications closed to each other for precise inspections, it may be that an individual would firstly require a high workload, maybe as many as a hundred Applications currently at any time. So, they get in an eight week cycle like they could be dealing with 50 or a hundred Applications and being passed through that process. If you're in a rural area, it might be in a different situation where to do site visits, it will take up a great part of your day and it's important that every case officer sees each and every Application site in order to make their judgments. And similarly, if the Applications were made complicated, see a planning officer dealing with development and management. Maybe dealing with one Application and one Application only, it might be a whole new shopping center in the middle of the town and they won't be focused in anything else, whereas they can't be handling by one Application.

Do town planners choose the developments they cover?

Once you're in a local authority working in a development management team it may be that you develop certain specializations within that team. So if, for example, you were good at dealing with the advertisement applications that came through, you might be content because you know what you are doing and you can do it quickly and efficiently. That's what you'll handle. Some planners may have more of a design flair than their colleagues. So if there are any housing proposals it may be that they tend to get those applications to deal with because then there is a measure of consistency. At the same time, they need to train up other people in those areas. So there may be an opportunity to do that as well; to work alongside a colleague to build up your expertise in that area.

Does a town planner get a salary?

As far as remuneration for planners it might not be the best paid profession in the world because you are working in the public sector. Public sector salaries are historically held below those in the private sector. However, given that more and more planners are working in the private sector there is an opportunity for the bright people to become heads of Consultancies or to work in the house building industry and become directors of those companies. There is an opportunity for some people to gain significant remuneration. Some of the best planning barristers are among the most highly paid members of the Bar so you could be working in planning and doing quite well. Like most things, it is a matter of time, experience, and opportunity. Some planners will move around quite a lot in order to keep taking a step up the ladder as an opportunity presents itself. Perhaps at a neighbouring authority or jumping in and out of the private sector into the public sector they can advance their career, their experience, and their salaries all at the same time.

How much can a successful town planner earn?

In terms of the top of the ladder for earnings I think you'd need to be in the private sector rather than the public sector to be earning the really high money and it would depend obviously on the size of the consultancy you're working in and what your responsibilities were, and indeed what risk you were exposed to because if you are the main employer for the rest you carry the can and you'd expect the remuneration to be equivalent. So, in the private sector a salary of a hundred thousand pounds would not be unusual. I don't have any details as to precisely how many people are at that level. In terms of entry into the public sector career officer posts for newly qualified graduates would probably start at about nineteen or twenty thousand and you might be on a salary scale then that would take you up into thirty thousand just by dint of staying where you are and getting more experience and taking the increments as they come along, but if you aspired to more senior management roles, it will depend on the size of the authority you're working for as to what the head of the service might be paid, but you could expect to be into the forties and with the larger authorities into the sixties and seventies. So, again it's what responsibility do you carry and indeed which different part of the country you're in, because if you're in an attractive part of the country it may be very easy to get planners to come and work in these idyllic surroundings and therefore you might not have to entice them with quite as much money as you would in other parts.

Have you ever been asked to take a bribe?

One of the problems planners face is that there is a myth among the general public that planners are susceptible to receiving money in brown envelopes, or gifts in kind.I spent some time being Vice Chairman of our Conduct and Discipline Panel, and that's the body that deals with our professional standards, so we're all obliged to follow a code. At the time I was aware of, and the only person in seven years that got struck off was the head of service that had gone to jail. Unfortunately, he'd gone to jail because he'd taken a lunchtime meeting in a restaurant some distance from his office, and he'd drunk wine that the client, the developer, sorry, not the client, but the developer had paid for that was considered to be about 65 pounds a bottle. He was actually there on a working lunch, but this was taken to impugn his reputation and of course, judged that he had taken a bribe in recommending that application after that. Now, to me, he didn't take a massive bribe, but his professional standards were impugned by what he did, and he paid the price and he was struck off. So I don't think there are many planners out there that will take bribes. There are some planning politicians, some local counselors, who have been found to have been unduly influenced by getting too close to developers and now there are protocols in place and guidance for newly elected politicians to make sure that probity is within the local authorities, local planning authorities particularly, and I do some of that member training as part of my conservancy work.

Who do planners work with?

In carrying out development, planners work very closely with a lot of disciplines that are working in the building environment. The building is probably designed by an architect. There will be a structural engineer involved. There may be somebody doing the landscape work. The site may have been evaluated for its ecological significance before the planning application went in. There may be experts in wildlife; a whole range of people. It will be depend upon the nature of the project as to which of the disciplines you work closely with.

Do town planners work with communities?

One of the things that modern planning pioneered was community engagement. Lord Scaffington wrote a report in 1968 called "People and Places," and he said that because planning has such an impact on communities, the planning process should involve discussions with them. So planners were first in the field at local authority services that did community engagement work. They're not the only ones who do it now. Particularly in areas like housing management and regeneration initiatives, there's a lot of community engagement that takes place. One of the aspects of the Planning Aid Service, which the Longtime Planning Institute sponsors -- it is its own separate charity, it is now supported by money from Central Government, it has expanded rapidly -- is to actually do a lot more in the way of community engagement work, especially with hard-to-reach groups, those communities that would otherwise get bypassed and don't know how to engage in the planning process. So it's giving a voice to them, finding ways of getting them involved.

Do you have arguments with architects?

One of the problems that planners have faced is criticism about the end product of the decisions they reach. So they give it planning approval and a developer goes out and builds what he's got a consent for, and then the public look at it and don't like it and they blame the planners. Chances are that whoever put that forward as a proposal involved a designer, whether it was somebody qualified as an architect or somebody with other building technical skills, but nevertheless there was a design in that process and criticism laid at planner's doors that they weren't sufficiently trained in design disciplines to be able to make judgements and seek improvements. On the other hand, architects resented planners commenting on their designs, because they felt that they had arrived through their skills at the right solution for a particular site. There are people in the Planning Institute and in the Architecture Institute who saw that there should be ongoing war between Planners and Architect about who had control over design. Fortunately, there was a coming together of some key influential people and an Urban Design Alliance was formed to say it isn't about individual building design. It's about context. It's about townscape. It's about public spaces as well as the buildings on the site. It took the debate into an entirely different area where there was common ground, so it no longer is something that becomes a bent wire between the professionals. There's an accomodation being reached and a respect for each person's role within the development process.