Planner pen portraits

Number six: The multi-disciplinary consultancy-arian

Studying geography at university gave me a bit of a passion about the environment but I thought I really needed a professional career, so off I went to do a planning masters. I thought about the public sector after that, but I liked the graduate scheme run at my company and am now a passionate ‘company man’.

I think technical planning interventions can help improve people’s quality of lives and address environmental issues, particularly the climate crisis. I am personally passionate about sustainability, although I’ve worked on some airport and highway infrastructure schemes.

I embrace a challenge and love to drive teams and projects. Money isn’t everything but it is important to me to get a fair reward for my hard work. I think my company is different to other private consultancies: we’re more collaborative and less combative.

I see myself as working in partnership with the public sector – and talk about ‘we in the profession’ – with an ideal that planners work together to make the right decisions for society. I like projects where I can be involved all the way through and can sell the advantages of having an ‘outsider’ status as a consultant. For me it’s about professional expertise, which can be applied for the public good in either the public or the private sector. But we need the public to get with what’s good for them.

I like to see a well-resourced local authority that can stand its ground for the interests of its local area; I’m depressed by central government reforms and lack of capacity post-austerity. There’s a certain element of being a planning geek about me. I even give up my own time to work on my local neighbourhood plan. I think I’m one of the good guys.

Quotes

"The public interest? It’s not a term I hear bandied about much."

"I can’t think of anything I’ve worked on which I haven’t felt is serving the public interest."

"I think it’s about weighing up the different consequences of development, understanding the relative benefits and harms and maybe coming to a decision that’s the right one."

"I definitely value the value of planning and when I tell people I’m a planner and proud of it and always strive to do a good job, but also, I think, an objective job, so sometimes when we have clients who want something specific and there are occasions when you have to say ‘that’s not what planning does’, or ‘that’s not what my role as a planner is’."

"It’s interesting talk to people in the public sector who haven’t had that same pressure to become MRTPI, or the same support to do it, because I was very well supported through the process and it’s made very little difference to them."

"I’ve stood up to individual clients who try to twist your findings."

"I think the public sector does still have the public interest … I think that at [x] consultancy [where I now work] the public interest is very important because of the type of client and type of projects we work on. One of the reasons I did leave [y] consultancy is I felt I was working for clients who were making a huge amount of profit on places that I could not afford to live."

"Having knowledge and expertise and then using that with a sense of responsibility and ethics … for me it goes back to knowledge and using it with a kind of sense of responsibility."

Notes

  • Has worked primarily or exclusively in, and is currently in, the private sector

  • Works for a large multi-disciplinary consultancy, which may do engineering / infrastructure / environmental work, or where planning is only part of the organisational focus

  • Perhaps feels more comfortable in this type of consultancy rather than an organisation at the ‘sharper’ end of private practice and is quite loyal to their employer

  • Possibly passionate about notions of place and holds an ideal of planning as placemaking

  • Can point to schemes they’ve been involved in and highlight a contribution made to something they profess to value, such as sustainability

  • Likely to argue professional expertise is important in the service of society and environment (at the right price)

  • Perhaps involved in planning beyond work, for example through supporting the RTPI or working on a neighbourhood plan