What must planners do differently?

Professionalism: What does it mean to be a professional in planning?

How often do planners think about what it means to be a professional? For members of the RTPI, it might be when they get their annual professional fees reminder, or scramble to collate CPD points. For most, it is probably not something that they question very regularly, nor are they likely to ask themselves why the work they do is worthy of the hallmark ‘professional’. In this sense, the fact that planning is a profession is normalised – there is a professional body (with the word ‘Royal’ in the title, no less). Entrants are expected to have completed a masters level course in planning, to undertake CPD, to cite their credentials on their CVs and when they present evidence, say to a public inquiry. But we might still ask what a being a professional actually means. Is it:

• Being a member of a professional body? Maybe, but estimates suggest around a quarter of planners are not RTPI members (Ref 1), and we might want to ask why is this the case?

• Based on our know-how, or the application of technical skills and knowledge? And if so, is there anything cohesive or really specialist in what planners profess to know and do?

• How they comport ourselves? This is a broader and looser meaning, about how people behave towards one another, or what it means to ‘be professional’ in the workplace.

To what extent do any of these definitions sum up what planners mean when they say that they’re ‘acting professionally’? It is notable that they all tend to prioritise the outward signs of a ‘profession’, rather than representing something deeper about the quality and nature of our work that is set apart as ‘professional’ in quality. It is this which we sought to question when setting about our research.

What do planners mean when they call themselves professionals?

One way to look deeper into what being a professional planner means in the UK at the current moment, is to consider how planners talk about being professional and how this shapes what they do. In talking to and observing a range of planners in the WITPI project, we started to build up a picture of how planners thought about being a professional. These chimed with the types of behaviour and characteristics mentioned by the RTPI in its recent Advice Note ‘Probity and the Professional Planner’ (Ref 2). There were three main characteristics claimed for the planner:

1. ‘Fearlessness’ was raised by a few (and merits a section in the Advice Note). This might be understood as having the confidence to challenge others where one feels that a decision is wrong, or of being willing to stand your ground. But on what is a decision to stand your ground based? For the Advice Note, it is planners’ commitment to ‘sustainable development’ – a concept that has become notorious for its multitude of definitions. For others, it might just be that their judgement emerges from accumulated experience which they are willing to stand by – though we might ask how relevant that experience is in a rapidly changing world? Professionals often claim to stand by their judgements, and a number of planners we spoke to gave examples of when they stood up to those in power. But others also referred to more grey areas, in which a judgement might be tweaked, a less than desirable outcome arrived at, despite reservations.

2. ‘Competence’ and ‘knowledge’ were noted by many interviewees as the hallmark of professionalism. After all, clients pay good money for expertise. This expertise was not always framed around distinctive technical knowledge, but also an ability to get things done, to manage a project or system. However, in an era of populist scepticism of expertise, planners might face accusations that their knowledge is irrelevant or merely exists to serve vested interests. What are the limits to their expertise, and do planners confess to them easily, particularly when they stand to make money from advising clients?

3. ‘Impartiality’ and ‘independence’ was a strong element of the claim that planners make to being professionals. This was repeated numerous times and is also a headline for the RTPI’s Advice Note. It represents a way of looking at planning as a balancing act, of weighing up pros and cons in a neutral manner. This neutrality is often invoked in the service of ‘the public interest’, of the planner as the all-knowing professional who is able to evaluate all in front of her and come to a reasoned judgement that moves beyond the short term and the partial to a rather more vaguely defined sense of the common good. But for many planners, pinning down the meaning of the public interest was more elusive. And how do they maintain neutrality in the face of decisions that are politically controversial, or indeed run counter to their personal views?

What don’t we talk about when we say we are a profession?

These are all characteristics that planners claim define their profession and they provide a means of justifying their work as special and valuable. But another question is to ask what do planners not claim? Where are the silences and absences from debate? We identified two key gaps:

1. Internal debate on the value of planners’ work or of its impact on society – whilst the planners we spoke to were reflective and personally considered their actions, there were far fewer examples of significant internal debate in the profession about the nature and purposes of what planners do, and whether they genuinely meet public needs, despite frequent challenges to planning. Perhaps this was because (as the Advice Note mentions): “Today, RTPI Members serve a range of interests.” There were some spaces in which to debate fundamentals, and some engaged frequently and critically (e.g. in relation to the TCPA’s Raynsford Review (Ref 3)), but this was amidst a wider cutting back of CPD budgets and space for debate.

The profession also seems to adopt a defensive and somewhat narrow position, whether in calling its members to be proud of planning in the face of external critiques, or trying to justify its value to society in pounds, shillings, and pence. In our discussions, there was strikingly little debate about the quality of places that planners had contributed towards – perhaps a recognition of the limits to planning in an era of market provision, or the often opposing ‘sides’ that planners are on when it comes to promoting or managing development.

With about one quarter of planners not being members of the RTPI, and an acknowledgement of the range of interests being served by its members, we might start to ask questions about the cohesiveness of the profession, and whether it is capable of openly debating its goals? In the absence of such debate, however, framing the purposes of planning is left to politicians, shadowy lobbyists and think tanks, leaving planners bemoaning the amount of ‘political interference’ in planning.

2. Linked to this, the intellectual foundations of planning practice were not often discussed – how might planners find distinctive ways of thinking to address key societal problems? Perhaps in the cut and thrust of just trying to manage a complex and fluid planning system, planners have failed to find spaces to consider what it is that underpins what they do and whether it is satisfactory. The RTPI professes to exist not only as a professional body but also as a learned society. Indeed, the history of the Institute includes fervent debates about its responsibility to develop a wider understanding of planning. And yet, we found limited evidence of these debates being taken on by planners, whether within the spaces of the RTPI or outside. Researchers and academics have a role, as do planners in the public and private sectors to advance this, perhaps across the boundaries of professional bodies, and certainly in dialogue with wider civil society.

Key questions

Ultimately, the question of being a professional is about more than a set of comportments. The final quote in this section reveals a key dilemma for planners – to what extent are they truly independent? Should they just accept the rules written into the wider systems and processes in which they work? And if they don’t, how can they raise their doubts and concerns in a productive way as a community?