What must planners do differently?

Planners’ agency: Where are the spaces to make a positive difference in an imperfect planning system?

Most planners want to ‘make a difference’, and most would-be planners originally saw planning as a way to do this. Almost all of the planners we interviewed as part of the biographical element of the Working in the Public Interest (WITPI) project postulated that the reason they went into planning in the first place was because they thought it would ‘make a difference’. Some were motivated by improving the public realm and protecting our built heritage; others voiced climate change concerns, some highlighted the need for infrastructure and housing; still others raised issues of social equity. Whatever their concern, they saw planning as an agent for change, and a force for good. Some were disillusioned, but most had found a way to live in the imperfect world of planning, and many of them have found a way to thrive without overly compromising their consciences.

Academics and professionals are aware of the use of power in planning to plan, to make decisions, to deliver development; and they are accepting of its presence in whatever planning does or achieves. There is also a general acceptance that planners know how the system works and how to utilise the system for their particular ends, reflected in the profession’s strapline of ‘mediating space’ without focusing unduly on the power dynamics inherently embedded in this mediating.

Within the UK context, and particularly in England, it is easier for government to change the planning system than it is for local planning authorities to produce a plan. (Ref 13) The planning system is a national government construct, designed in Whitehall, informed by consultation and heavy lobbying, but ultimately shaped by the state. Whatever the construct, it favours particular concerns and particular interests. The existing system emphasises an ongoing housing and infrastructure ‘crisis’, requiring more housing units in particular; and it favours a neoliberal, marketised approach to delivery, facilitated by the state, and further facilitated by a relaxation of regulation.

Changes to the system alter the agency of planners and other actors. The introduction of ‘conformity’ to national policy, for example, increased the centre’s power to control. Neighbourhood planning genuinely empowers local communities to prepare a statutory plan, provided they have the wherewithal to do it, and comply with ‘conformity’. The commercialisation of planning further empowers commercial interests to partake in planning primarily for financial reward, while reduced regulation reduces the power of planners to seek optimum outcomes. Tweaks to the system ripple through, often with seismic repercussions: a relaxation in housing density standards will change the quantity and quality of units we provide nationwide, altering our settlements’ morphologies, and potentially diminishing the quality of our public realm if not managed well. Planners and other stakeholders operate within this system utilising whatever agency they can to achieve their particular noble or ignoble ends imperfectly.

Agency in planning takes a variety of different forms. National government’s power and control of the system expressed through conformity, and the duty for neighbouring authorities to co-operate, set the parameters of those planning locally and their capacity to operate. Legal powers that permit planners to plan shape the process and the tone of decision-making; democratic accountability ranges from representative local authority planning committees to full-blown community engagement activities to enable those affected by the outcomes to have their say. Concurrently, the need for technical expertise empowers the specialist. Land and property ownership is also a very strong lever, empowering or frustrating wider planning intentions with the owners’ right not to cooperate, potentially only overcome with the planners’ use of compulsory purchase powers where proven to be necessary.

Funding always matters, which given the recent emphasis on austerity and the reliance on the market to deliver, favours those that can afford to engage with planning and to develop over those that ‘protest too much’, whatever the quality of what is being offered. Our focus group data, drawn from eight discussions across the nations of the UK (completed in 2018), and made up almost entirely of local authority and private sector planners, consistently characterised those objecting to development as NIMBYs, convinced that the planners’ expertise and judicious use of material considerations had mitigated the worst aspects of proposed development and that locals’ concerns were largely unjustified, or not planning-related. As the nature of planning changes, these different forms of agency also shift in emphasis, but some always tend to predominate.

The existing system is fragmented, complicated and replete with processes and procedures that need to be navigated, requiring the skills of the expert planner to give advice, produce documentation to gain suitable statutory recognition, whether that be in relation to a statutory plan or a development decision. Currently, it is also fundamentally permissive, with planners required to proactively engage with development. Inevitably, this reduces the effective agency of the system and of those operating the system to affect outcomes.

The system is also increasingly cumbersome with many planners highlighting the volume of work required to achieve a planning outcome, be it the production of a plan or a development decision; and the volume of work it takes to read and respond to it all.

Without decrying attempts to improve the evidence-based underpinnings of planning’s decision-making, it appears that the volume of work has been made worse, partly by technology allowing increased traffic in relation to the volume of supporting documents needed; the volume of plan documents and applications being processed, and the volume of respondents making comment.

These have all grown like topsy in terms of their size and length. This paradoxically reduces stakeholders’ agency. ‘Headspace’ gets crowded and pertinent points get lost in the noise and activity.

Effectively the system seems to beget the system, with relatively little gain for anyone, beyond financial reward reflected in salaries and commissions.

The system itself is difficult to deliver. At the time of writing, local planning authorities have seen unprecedented cuts to funding resulting in reduced staffing, all while still being required to deliver the same planning functions. Most have also experienced multiple restructuring exercises to streamline service provision.

In 2018, five out of a possible 433 planning authorities have been outsourced as part of a wider council outsourcing exercise; three have set up local authority trading companies of their own. Most have developed a portfolio type of staffing arrangement comprising a hybrid and fluid mixture of permanent staff, seconded staff, contract staff, agency staff and shared working arrangements with other organisations to deliver their services. This was intended to provide sufficient departmental expertise, capacity and agility, to weather the inevitable peaks and troughs in service demand to achieve targets. However, it is also felt that outsourcing reduces the commissioning authority’s control.

Some planners aired concerns about the loss of institutional memory and service quality bought about by short-termist approaches to staffing. At the same time, others emphasised the value of an efficient, well-run local planning authority, and the perceived agency of department heads to lead for the benefit of the locality as a whole.

This begins to highlight the difficulties of delivering a quality service in the current planning context. Still, many planners were comfortable about their roles and their agency within them, taking pleasure in pointing to things to which they felt they had contributed. Some were also taking the chance to change their modes of operating to reflect new working cultures.

Some planners had clearly sought out opportunities that fitted their personal commitments and allowed them to feel that they were making a difference, on climate change, neighbourhood planning or the provision of housing. Others sought ways to work against the grain of the system, whether by speaking out on issues that mattered to them or finding ways of quietly pursuing their commitments. In these ways we found examples of planners who have sought to utilise their agency in ways they believe make a difference.

Key questions

The system is constraining; the process can be frustrating; day-to-day activities may be more problematic than challenging; but many planners still find a way through, and believe they make a difference. How can planners best use their agency to make a difference?