Planners' management skills called for in switch to central delivery role

Planning, 27 June 2008

As a profession responsible for managing change in places, sometimes planners push strongly for a change in emphasis. But frequently it is others - such as the government, local politicians and communities or the private sector - who want planners and planning to change.

These external pressures are part of the planner's everyday life and we set a course that we believe is the best in the legal framework and current practice. Although planning has been primarily concerned with policy-led regulation, planners have largely been left to get on with it.

Now planning has a new role and planners have perhaps been slow to accept that they need to respond. Assuming that the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and this development management role will go away if we keep our heads down is not an adequate response. The seismic shift giving planning a central role is so strong that regardless of planners' willingness it will still take place.

In defining this new role there are strong resemblances with two previous periods. The first is 1947, when planning's role was both regulatory and direct delivery. In the immediate post-war period, the task was to support infrastructure renewal and make places fit for economic growth.

Practice was more directly interventionist - resembling what is now called regeneration - bringing land and funding together. Planning became a delivery tool for housing, town centres, suburbs and the associated social and economic infrastructure. This was proactive planning, akin to today's development management process. It is about making everywhere somewhere.

Parallels can also be found in the 1970s, when the development plan manual set out a more co-ordinated programme to promote economic, social and environmental well-being. The model delivery tables could serve well as a guide for achieving a sound local development framework (LDF) today.

In 1970, planners only had the power of their more centralised policy role. But today, they can work directly with their local strategic partnerships (LSP) to draw together the programmes to meet infrastructure deficits. For the public sector, an LSP infrastructure or delivery sub-group can bring together public sector capital programmes for existing and new development. As the LDF becomes the means to deliver the local public sector capital programme, there is the strength of the system to support this process. Planners cannot do it alone.

For many planners, the more proactive approach of previous decades does not lie within their experience, although it may be the reason why they became planners. For longer-standing members of the profession the new approach may strike a chord, but there is a major difference. Local planners have to work within a governance architecture where the LSP owns much of the process and sets the agenda through the sustainable community strategy. The way that councils and health services are collaborating gives an indication of the changes.

Planners have to be aware of the world they inhabit. If a new policy such as polyclinics emerges, then they need to consider the implications for integration between health, recreation, housing and post office services in one place. Should hospitals then downsize, they need to consider how to meet the infrastructure requirements of the locality as brownfield land. These sound like new skills but are extensions of the planner's existing capabilities.

The major skills challenge facing planners is the need to become more aware that they are managers. This is not only about meeting deadlines and performance indicators but also managing interfaces in organisations, co-ordinating a range of partners and using both informal and formal modes of operation.

Planners will not achieve their new delivery role if everyone is expected to learn our language and share our pain at our perceived difficulties with the process. It is within our technical skills to manage these processes and deliver what we and others have identified.

Janice Morphet is visiting professor of town planning at University College London. She will talk about these issues at the RTPI Planning Convention from 9 to 11 July. For more information, please visit www.theplanningconvention.co.uk.