Introduction

Reforming planning has been a familiar trope in UKpolitics for over a generation. Following theantipathy displayed under the Thatcher/ Majoradministrations (1979– 97), a rhetoric of reform andmodernisation dominated the New Labour period (1997–2010), further calls for systemic reform to theplanning system were apparent in the run-up to the2010 election (Conservative Party, 2009; 2010a) andsubsequently informed the Liberal Democrat–Conservative Coalition government's approach toplanning (2010– 15). Appetite for delivering ‘systemchange’ shows little sign of abating, with variouspolicy changes and legislative amendments undertakenby the Conservative governments after 2015.

The aim of successive governments has been to‘speed-up’ planning, making it ‘fit for purpose’ andmore proactive. These ‘upstream’ rationales forreform witnessed since 2010, have been entwined withthe austerity agenda and public sector cutbacks,with central government inviting a greater role forthe private and third sectors in planning. This hascontinued a process of privatisation in planningfunctions set in train 30 or so years ago (Higginsand Allmendinger, 1999; Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2014;MacDonald et al, 2014). One illustration of this hasbeen a change in the composition of planningpractitioners; while there has been no formalresearch on this to date, the Royal Town PlanningInstitute's (RTPI) membership survey provides someindication of the scale of the shift towards theprivate sector in recent years, with around half ofall chartered planners in the UK working outside ofthe public sector as of 2013 (RTPI, 2014). While farfrom comprehensive, the RTPI's directory of planningconsultants showed 465 registered planningconsultancy firms, ranging in type from ‘soletrader’ practitioners, many of who are oftenex-local authority planners, to large planning teamsin multi-sector global consultancy firms withmulti-billion dollar turnovers.

Planning consultants are typically employed in two mainways, either as ‘advocates’ for development sites onbehalf of a developer client, or as evidenceproviders (that is, ‘advisors’) for local planningauthority (LPA) clients. The latter role involvesconsultants drawing upon specialist knowledge tomake a number of technical, evidence-based inputs tothe planning system. As Table 12.1 shows, this mightinvolve servicing particular niches or entail muchmore strategic inputs, with some private firms nowrunning core planning services (see Capita,2013).