TPR, 83 (5) 2012 doi:10.3828/tpr.2012.

33

Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

Reform processes and discretionary

acting space in English planning practice,
19972010

This article explores the consequences for English planning and planners of reforms to planning and
wider governance processes under the Labour administrations of 1997-2010. It reports on a research
project concerned with planning as a profession, which included a literature review and interviews with
practitioners to identify the main pressures on planning practice. It concludes that, despite the reform
intentions to widen planners remits, other governance processes such as managerialism, outsourcing
and corporatism more commonly reduced the discretionary space for public sector planners to act. Such
space was instead taken up by the private sector, intermediaries and others.

Keywords: English planning system 19972010, planning practice, governance reform, new vision for
planning, planning profession

That planning systems like all such governance systems are always in a state of
flux, has been especially true in England in the last two decades. Limiting itself to the
period of Labour Party Government (1997-2010), the focus in this article is on the vision
of a more integrated spatial planning approach (e.g. as legislated for in the Planning
and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004), which is used as a specific context of change
for planning and to consider how professional practice and practitioners changed in
response. Following a literature review discussion on professionalism, planning and
governance reform, we define a number of themes which emerge as broad areas of
concern to planning as a profession. These examine the pressures to change exerted
on the public sector and its allied professions, with planning as a specific case, and their
impact. Using an interpretive research approach, we explore the consequences for the
profession as a whole and for individual planners. Our analysis identifies a number of
pressures on practitioners emerging from the new vision for planning which effectively
reduced their discretionary acting space. These include pressures within the vision
for planning itself as well as those emerging with wider changes in governance struc-
tures and practices, notably: managerialism, outsourcing and corporatism within local
government, together with more vociferous interested parties influencing the political
dimension of planning decision-making.
The research focused on the pressures to change exerted on the public sector
and its associated professions, paying specific attention to planning, situating these

Susannah Gunn is a Lecturer in Planning and Geoff Vigar is a Senior Lecturer in Planning and Director of the Global
Urban Research Unit, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Claremont Tower,
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU; email: zan.gunn@ncl.ac.uk; geoff.vigar@ncl.ac.uk
534 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

within the wider context of the new vision for planning and Labours modernisation
agenda. We present the research method for our empirical research, and our analysis
sets up a conversation between the literature and selected interviewees responses.
It concentrates, firstly, on how the reform reformed planners, and subsequently on
other forces for change emerging from wider changes in governance structures and
practices (listed above) which influenced the political dimension of planning decision-
making. From this discussion our analysis reflects on the contemporary UK planning
profession, suggesting the emergence of greater evangelism from consultant planners
championing the potentials and necessity of planning actions, and more risk-averse
public sector planners constrained by limited discretionary space. We conclude that
the vision for planning did seek to open discretionary space, but the constant reforms
and other changes and pressures occurring elsewhere in the system (managerialism,
corporatism) actually reduced it.

Context: reforming English planning

In the past two decades in the UK, and particularly in England, changes to the plan
ning system have been considerable and frequent (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones,
2009; Haughton et al., 2010, Ch.2). These changes had three main points of origin.
One was dissatisfaction with the pre-existing land-use planning system
(Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2009; Inch, 2009; UN Habitat, 2009, Ch.4; and,
historically Reade, 1987; Thornley, 1993). Some of this dissatisfaction lay in the inevi-
table consequence of the dilemmas underpinning planning work itself (Schn, 1983);
the system is imperfect in different and often contradictory ways, depending on an
individuals particular point of view. Nevertheless, Nadin (2007) identified very varied
voices reaching a consensus of opinion that the previous system was not effective.
The second, more positive point of origin, derived partly in response to this
consensus, was that the planning policy community itself drove change by re-visioning
the core ideas and intentions of planning, identifying four key elements to the new
planning vision:
Spatial dealing with the unique needs and characteristics of places
Sustainable looking at the short, medium and long term issues
Integrative in terms of the knowledge, objectives and actions involved
Inclusive recognising the wide range of people involved in planning
(RTPI, 2001, 1)
Underpinning these ideas was the notion that planning should be both Value-driven
concerned with identifying, understanding and mediating conflicting sets of values
and action-oriented driven by the twin activities of mediating space and making of
place (RTPI, 2001, 1).
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 535

In effect, this re-visioning reiterated core planning values and refocused planning
practice on broader processes of spatial change, encompassing social and environ-
mental issues and links to other policy sectors. This shift was captured in the idea of
a move from land-use to spatial planning and greater emphasis on integration and
delivery. It focused on the widening of the planning remit and the requirement for
planners to become more proactive, in line with Government intention: We want
planning to rediscover its purpose, to be a strategic, proactive force for economic
prosperity, social cohesion and environmental protection (ODPM, 2002, quoted in
RTPI/ROOMatRTPI, 2003, 1). This professional vision of planning endorsed by
central government appeared to open the discretionary space for action, and the
profession appeared set to evolve (RTPI, 2003, 1) and operate effectively within this
space.
The third point of origin was that the English planning reforms under the 1997-2010
administrations were enacted in the context of wider attempts to modernise govern-
ment. The reforms were certainly third way in character: they strived for a greater
sense of social and environmental justice than previously, but were also undertaken in
a wider context that could be characterised as neo-liberal (Jessop, 2005). A neo-liberal
approach to governance was seen in the rolling out of state mechanisms to maintain
and manage marketisation processes and their consequences (Peck and Tickell, 2002;
2007). This was evidenced in a growth of planning activity performed outside the
public sector formerly done within it, an increasing use of techniques to extend central
control and, despite a focusing of planning towards a goal of achieving sustainable
development (DCLG, 2005), a failure to interpret this as being incommensurate with
continued (unlimited) economic growth (Haughton et al., 2008).
In response to these pressures, it was thought that the previous system needed to
be improved in five key ways outlined by Nadin (2007) and characterised by Shaw and
Lord (2009):
a more responsive system: more timely planning and decision-making processes
which could shape outcomes rather than report on them;
an inclusive system: more effective participation and consultation processes to
generate public confidence in planning decision-making;
a collaborative system: more effective collaboration with other policymakers and
stakeholders to integrate policymaking more coherently;
an evidence-based system: greater evidence-based reasoning for policy formulation;
a results-driven system: a focus on delivering outcomes in line with wider govern-
ment objectives.
These changes included a strong emphasis on policy integration (Nadin, 2007;
Nadin and Stead, 2008). That planning had aspired to this aspect of policymaking
prior to 2004 was evident in the RTPI vision, indicating that other policy initiatives
536 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

could be coordinated through the development plan. But the pre-2004 plan had
proved too unwieldy for other sectors to use in this way (Nadin, 2007). This idea
also suggested a governance landscape composed of policymakers outside planning
that thought it worthwhile paying attention to planning initiatives. In Healeys (2006)
terms, the reforms to planning assumed a governance landscape that had yet to arrive.
Early in the reform process this hypothesis appeared true.
However, Shaw and Lord (2009) suggested the 2004 reforms emphasis on integra-
tion allowed planners to become mediators of partnership working through, among
others, Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to achieve the delivery of planned outcomes.
Morphet (2009) went further, suggesting that the integration emphasis centralised
planning within the public sector, but shifted emphasis from a free-standing plan
to a wider governance architecture. This new architecture was designed to achieve
the objectives of Sustainable Community Strategies (produced by the LSPs) and the
delivery targets of Local Area Agreements (LAAs) (agreed between central govern-
ment, the local authority and other public sector service providers). Morphet argued
that this made the core strategy (produced by local planners) a key delivery document,
supported by schedules aligning public sector and other funding to LAA targets, to
deliver intended outcomes (notably infrastructure and housing) rather than to stop at
policy production.
The perception of a reformed planning, within governments wider modernising
of local government, was that it could resolve and deliver win-win-win policy
constructions1 through cross-cutting issues and could target resources at community
priorities (Shaw and Lord, 2007; Sullivan and Williams, 2009). In contrast, the RTPI
(2001) vision recognised the inherent tensions and contradictions in these construc-
tions and indeed within planning itself. It perceived planning as the space where they
might be mediated, perhaps to best effect but not to everybodys satisfaction. Indeed,
RTPIs vision suggested that it was precisely in this situated tension that planners
professional judgement and expertise was most significant (RTPI, 2001). However,
Morphets (2009) perception of the new regime was that planning and the devel-
opment plan were not necessarily the mediators (integrators) of policymaking, but
were part of what was integrated; and, beyond planning, other policymakers have
not necessarily accepted plannings claim to coordinate policy which has, to them,
incidental spatial repercussions. So, situating planning closer to the heart of govern-
ment in relation to its coordination of place-making activities was not without its
detractors, as stakeholders beyond planning resisted the idea of planners as inevitable
mediators (Haughton et al., 2010).

1 For example urban renaissance would regenerate and repopulate urban centres, meet increasingly high housing
requirements, reduce sprawl and generate more sustainable travel behaviour (UTF, 1999; DTLR, 2001).
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 537

Analytical frame and method

The research reported on here explored how the reform influences discussed above
affected planning practices discretionary acting space. First, through reviewing the
literature on professionalism and planning, and governance reform, we identified five
broad areas of concern to explore in interviews with practitioners, covering the types
of tasks they did, how they did them, the time they spent on what they perceived to
be core activity and the time they attributed to other activities. Second, reflecting
the growth of private-sector planning (Johnston, 2003; 2006; 2008; Winkley, 2002),
we asked interviewees to discuss the relations between planning consultants and the
public sector and changes in the work being done by each. Third, we focused on the
interviewees views on the changing nature of planning work more generally. Fourth,
we asked interviewees to consider what made planning a professional activity, and,
finally, to reflect on their values, motivations and the ethics of professionalism. This
research project broadly followed the principles of an interpretive approach to social
science research and we tried to keep topic areas open to prevent unnecessary struc-
turing of responses and allow for surprise (Wagenaar, 2011).
All of our interviews were carried out in 2009. Our interviewees (see Table 1)
were mostly senior professionals (20+ years experience), typically encompassing a
career in both private and public sectors. In response to a frequent claim that junior
employment levels are characterised by greater deskilling than previously (Brown
et al., 2010), we interviewed a small number of junior planners (2-3 years experi-
ence), representing those trained and entering the profession in the reformed system

Table 1 List of practitioner interviewees

Practitioner Description
1 Senior manager, local government, southern England, previously private sector
2 Recent graduate, district authority, northern England
3 Senior consultant, private sector, northern England, previously local government and academia,
northern England
4 Senior planner, public sector, northern England, previously public sector
5 Senior planner, public sector, northern England (moved to academia)
6 Senior planner, public sector, northern England (wider involvement in local governance/politics)
7 Recent graduate, private sector, seconded to public sector for 1 year, northern England
8 Independent consultant, public and private sector, southern England
9 Senior planner (recently retired), public sector, northern England
10 Senior consultant, private sector, northern England, previously NGO
11 Senior planner, private sector, northern England, previously public sector
538 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

(introduced 2004). This group enabled us to analyse junior-level work being under-
taken and their perception of the new system as the only one with which they were
familiar.
We used interviewees who were known to us to varying degrees (see Blichfeldt and
Heldbjerg, 2011). Each responded for themselves as professional planners rather than
as their organisations representatives. They were chosen in relation to their differing
experiences in planning, from both the private and public sectors. It was important
to us that the views they expressed were their own and not automatically views that
we shared. Our strategy of interviewing people we knew drew on established bonds
of trust to facilitate a deep exploration of their everyday practices (Weiss, 1995).
Interviews were taped, transcribed and analysed. As our research had focused on
professionalism and the changing nature of planning in the light of the p rofessions
own shift in emphasis (RTPI, 2001) and Labours reform agenda (DTLR, 2001), we
also met representatives of the professional planning body (RTPI) to discuss the inter-
view themes and to test our findings with them at the end of the project. The discus-
sion focused particularly on the nature of planning professionalism in the UK.
The next section reviews the forces for change experienced by planners in relation
to the recent vision and changes to planning outlined above and demonstrates the
disjuncture between the vision and the reality as seen by our interviewees.

Reforming planning: reforming planners

In line with Labours modernising government agenda, reform made public sector
planners both the agents and the objects of change (Finlayson, 2009). Alongside the
amending of the hard institutional infrastructure of institutions, laws and policy
prescriptions, the demand to change the soft infrastructure of cultures and practices
was also evident and became more intense with increasing delays in generating a
new system of plans (e.g. ODPM, 2002; Richards, 2007; DCLG, 2008; Quartermain,
2009). Thus planners became champions of the new system, while being criticised for
not doing so quickly enough, in the right ways, or, indeed at all (DCLG, 2008; NPF,
2007). Planners were labelled as resistant to change and became cast as barriers to
modernisation and planning reform (Finlayson, 2009). These claims surrounding the
positioning of planners provide a departure point for our empirical work.
The changes to planning in the 2000s tended to assume a consensus on what
planning was and what it should be doing, and, by extension, what planners should
be thinking and doing (Finlayson, 2009; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2009). The
culture change problem then became simply one of converting the mass of the
profession to the right way of thinking, but culture change requires sustained fine-
grained work, as it demands assimilation into professionals already complex identities
(Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Shaw and Lord, 2007).
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 539

Whether characterised as a relatively smooth transition (Morphet, 2009) or more

incremental (Tewdwr-Jones, 2008), the speed and extent of reform processes being
devised and implemented hampered the necessary fine-grained work by not allowing
time for new practices to embed themselves. This led one of our planner interviewees
to comment that we have had ten years of complete chaos 2 (Practitioner 1). Interviews
indicated non-comprehension of the changes required, and an initial perception that
the system remained fundamentally the same: my boss thought it was more of the
same, just different names, and that we could complete the U[nitary] D[evelopment]
P[lan] the way we were doing it under transitional measures (Practitioner 2).
However, as time progressed, all the planners interviewed had in varying degrees
tried to accommodate change, so that in actuality the perception of planners resis-
tance to change identified by Finlayson (2009) was not very evident. Indeed, the speed
of change generated the demand for more advice on how to work the new procedures.
So, despite an intention that the new system would allow local innovation to flourish,
an unintended consequence was that the reverse occurred with a dependency culture
becoming more evident, as local authority planners looked to the centre for advice on
how to work the ever-changing apparatus (Gunn, 2009; Gunn and Hillier, 2010; 2012).
This suggests an overly-compliant, rather than resistant, culture.
The change discourse also caused an increasing rupture between an elite commu-
nity of planners and rank-and-file local authority planners working on the ground.3
This was confirmed in several of the interviews, and is evident in Morphets comment
(2009, 400) that planners were disbelieving about the change to working in a more
integrated way with other public sector partners. In such an instance, continuous
exhortations to change, while simultaneously speeding up reform processes and
the production of guidance materials from intermediaries (Gunn and Hillier, 2012),
without greatly increasing resources to deal with these pressures, was counterproduc-
tive, contributing to a lack of morale among the people to whom they were seeking
to grant agency.

Wider forces for change

While planning reform has clearly had a significant impact on planning practice,
other governance reform emerged as at least as significant. We discuss three facets
of this below, derived from several evident in the literature but which were identified
from the interviews as particularly significant: the rise of managerialism; outsourcing
to the private sector; and, changes in plannings political context.

2 Starting with the reissue by central government of Planning Policy Guidance Note 3 in 2000.
3 Larson (1990) and Freidson (1994) both suggest that the distance between average practitioners and the core of
a professional community is typically large.
540 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

Managerialism and planning

A growing infiltration of tools and techniques, often associated with the New Public
Management in public sector practice, can be observed. Although planning was less
affected than other domains (Audit Commission, 2006; Nadin, 2007), managerialist
thought and practice permeated the new vision for planning (DTLR, 2001; ODPM,
2002). The practice evolved to link performance targets to financial incentives through
the Planning Delivery Grant (abolished in 2010): local authorities were rewarded
for producing a planning strategy, meeting time-limited targets to decide applica-
tions and, subsequently, for delivering new housing in line with central government
requirements.
Target-setting has a range of effects for planning (Clifford, 2009). First, it distorts
priorities, as it pursues particular concerns, often those of central government as target-
setter, at others expense. This can be positive: one of our interviewees commented,
less is missed [now] in routine planning work (Practitioner 3). Conversely, the RTPI
(2009 interview) believed that the target-driven culture for financial reward distorted
place-based planning; Practitioner 1 highlighted how process concerns crowded out
deliberation about activities by his department, which reinforced a path dependency
in the authoritys work: we review how we do things but never what we do.
Monitoring processes can also challenge the sorts of cross-cutting issues the integra-
tion agenda, alleged to be at the heart of the new planning approach, was designed
to address. So in practice certain things remain undone because it is too difficult,
lines of management dont allow it (Practitioner 1). In part the literature suggests this
stems from central governments own lack of integration, with targets from different
departments competing and overlapping (Benington, 2000; Sullivan and Gillanders,
2005). According to Practitioner 1, local planning authorities (LPAs) focused resources
where they could demonstrate good performance: development management and
the processing of planning applications. This could have depressing outcomes: you
get quick, poorly thought out refusals (Practitioner 3, our emphasis; also Campbell
and Marshall, 2002, 103). Such a lack of care contributes to a box-ticking mentality
among planners under pressure to process applications quickly, which was acknowl-
edged by central government (ODPM, 2005; Clifford, 2009; RICS, 2010).
Clifford (2009) posited an alternative view: that the speed required to meet targets
led to more delegation to planning officers. Indeed, one target did financially reward
local authorities for the number of delegated decisions taken (regardless of their
quality; see Practitioner 3 above). So, for planners at some levels in local government,
there may be greater empowerment (see below), but most delegated decisions are
minor in nature and it is hard to argue that this empowering was very significant.
Secondly, and more generally, target-setting and associated monitoring diverted
resources from frontline planning work client consultations, policy exploration,
etc. (Gunder, 2003) to reporting processes. Among the public sector interviewees,
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 541

senior staff highlighted how monitoring focused resource on process to the neglect of
strategic concerns: We are a 4-star improving council but this reflects the fact that we
have a huge performance team (Practitioner 1), and commented on the time this took:
I have a 60:40 split between admin/management and substantive planning; some
weeks I do no substantive planning at all, other weeks its the other way round, but I
cant remember when that last happened. (Practitioner 4)
Officially 50% of my time is spent on management most of it is just unnecessary
it is producing evidence of having gone through due process. (Practitioner 1)
Reporting processes take time and can be complicated. Annual plan-monitoring
reports included data on a large number of indicators, and missed targets required
underperformance to be justified. As targets tried to capture more sophisticated
outcome-related issues they became more reductionist and failed to account for
the complexities inherent in a given issue. For example, the Crisis of 2008 onward
devastated property markets and overnight made many targets unachievable. More
broadly, planning reforms vision of plannings increased and diversified discretionary
space was hampered by the time taken to respond to central governments managerial
processes.

Bypassing local government planners? The outsourcing of planning activity

Although primarily a vision for public sector planning, planning reform also
changed private-sector work. As local governments role increased (especially in local
strategy-making), rather contradictorily much of this activity moved from the public
to the private sector. Private-sector consultants are engaged by local planning authori-
ties for numerous reasons: specialised expertise, knowledge and skills that cannot be
provided in-house; cheaper services; capacity to help with peaks in workload; creative
approaches to problems; or an independent voice to add legitimacy to planning
arguments in-house or to external audiences (Fordham, 1990; Healey, 1985; Davoudi
and Healey, 1990; Higgins and Allmendinger, 1999; Campbell and Marshall, 2002).
The difference in this context is a general neoliberal-inspired belief in the greater
capacities of the private sector, confirmed in some planning reform documentation
(e.g. DTLR, 2001). Our interviewees noted that the public sector was commissioning
more private-sector work than previously. This was reflected in the percentage of
RTPI members in the private sector, which rose from 18 per cent in 1998 to 30 per cent
in 2008 (RTPI, 2009, personal correspondence). Planning magazines annual survey
of planning consultants also suggested significant growth in private-sector planning
activity, with double-digit year-on-year growth from the initial survey (1997) until the
onset of the current Crisis in 2008 (Johnston, 2003; 2006; 2008). However, the amount
of work coming from the public sector is unclear.
542 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

The new planning systems demand for a robust evidence base was not new, but
its increased prescription and more formal embedding within systemic processes
(DCLG, 2005) fuelled the growth in private-sector consultancy work. Practitioner 5
suggested that, in many district councils, most of the extra grant from government
had been spent on consultants. So on what was this spent? We saw a rise in the use of
consultants to avert risk. One planner suggested that a risk management approach to
commissioning was being used to avert catastrophic risk (Practitioner 4), for example
a loss of costs at planning appeal or a failure to get a plan approved. Indeed, another
local authority reported that, rather than outsourcing, it had tried to complete a data
collection exercise in-house, but overran significantly as the skills were no longer avail-
able (Practitioner 6). In contrast, we had no reports of consultants failing to deliver,
even if the quality of the work was often thought to be average.
The literature suggests this is not confined to the UK, confirming a broader
neo-liberal influence on planning practice (e.g. Steele, 2009). Besides activities tradi-
tionally outsourced by local government (e.g. technical work), in certain cases whole
core-functions and routine work transferred to the private sector. The effects of these
trends have led some commentators to talk of planning being decentred (Freestone
and Thompson, 2007) as planning shifts from a public sector-dominated activity to a
more complex picture.
One interesting vignette from our empirical work concerned a junior planner
employed by a private-sector practice. Practitioner 7 was seconded to a local authority
for a year almost immediately on arriving at his private-sector company. He worked
in development management, primarily to reduce backlog, supported by his line
managers in both organisations. This raises a number of issues: of value for money
both parties felt the arrangement made commercial sense, despite the buy-in cost to
the local authority being far higher than the individuals salary if employed directly;
and of the ethical issues concerning the individual and his management, in terms of
commercially valuable information gained from working in regulatory practice (see
Fordham, 1990; Winkley, 2002; and Healy, 2009, for a contrasting view).
Increasingly, then, we see public sector planners as ringmasters: as commissioners
of work, coordinating inputs into strategy-making (Goodstadt, 2007); but also, their
expert input to such processes is sometimes minimal. While good commissioning of
such processes is part of professional planning work, other more substantive elements
appeared to have diminished in significance. Coupled with increasing attention to
meeting targets, this suggests a great deal of performativity, with little actual contri-
bution of expertise and mobilisation of the values that encouraged many into public
sector planning practice in the first instance (Campbell and Marshall 2002), and the
public sector planner reduced to the role of a mere box-ticker or clock watcher
(Clifford, 2009; cf. Sager, 2009).
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 543

Plannings position in local government

Central governments modernising agenda reshaped the institutional landscape of
local government. Shaw and Lord (2007) and Morphet (2009) have drawn attention
to changes in local governance architecture, and suggested that this had integrated
planning into a wider agenda to deliver shared outcomes. Potentially this could give
planners considerable influence in agenda-setting, and could assist their ability to
deliver the ambitions of the plan by engaging with others over possible resource
streams. However, Morphet (2009) reiterated the dominance of the strategic commu-
nity strategy (SCS) produced by the local strategic partnerships and the requirement
for the development plan to conform to its ambitions. She noted that this reduced
the status of the plan and planners, but that it connected the plan better to other
public-service priorities and activities, which was a net gain. Others also viewed this
increased integration positively (Nadin, 2007; Shaw and Lord, 2007). Potentially this
was true, but discounts many of our interviewees assertions that tools such as the SCS
are irrelevant to planning strategies or indeed place-making, given their generality in
actuality. Morphet (2009) concurred that planners have frequently been dismissive of
the SCS, but considered this part of the required paradigm shift towards the more
integrated approach.
This shift needs to be considered in relation to other aspects of local governance
change that occurred concurrently. First, local authorities continued a long-term
process of consolidation towards a small number of very large directorates. In such
processes, the chief planner role often disappeared. A Local Government White
Paper (DCLG, 2006) lamented this loss, suggesting that this position be part of local
authority management teams, but to no tangible effect. This absence undermined the
new spatial planning systems potential to drive territorial management processes in
many places. So, while local authorities were empowered to undertake more strategic
thinking, planning was not necessarily part of this process, and the absence of planners
from local authority senior management teams partly explains this loss.
Table 2 Opportunities and threats to planning and planners

Opportunities
To be central to place-shaping activity
To shape the extent and location of new private invest-
ment
To achieve greater social and ecological sustainability
To shape and deliver a public sector capital
programme
Threats
To be/remain bypassed in such processes that will
likely proceed anyway
To be seen as a barrier to investment
To see these arguments marginalised by powerful
economic discourse
To be bypassed by other parts of the state, both within
local government and beyond

Source: loosely based on NPF (2007, 31).

544 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

Second, and bolstering this trend, was an increasing corporatisation of local

government and the power of chief executives and a small senior management team.
This stronger central control provided an opportunity for planning and planners to
achieve more strategic steering than previously, if they could position themselves well
within local government (NPF, 2007, 42; see Table 2). However, as one of our inter-
viewees noted, if planners dont do it they will simply get left behind (Practitioner 8),
a sentiment echoed by Morphet (2009). Worryingly for planners in this context, RTPI
(2007) reported that they were increasingly isolated from other professions, preventing
them from developing alliances necessary to do such steering work.
The stronger corporate steer reflects a smaller number of politicians and officers
at the heart of the contemporary local authority. This process can deny professional
judgement for planners and cause frustration for applicants: One of our private-sector
interviewees noted that increasingly we find [local government] planners unable to give
us a steer on proposals (Practitioner 3). Others were sceptical of this argument, prefer-
ring to see continuity, at least in determining planning applications: the [planning]
committee takes its quasi-judicial role and independence seriously (Practitioner 9).
However, in policy terms, he admitted that: planning is more centrally controlled
from within the council, planners on the ground are trying to reconcile many issues
given the steer from the top, mitigation is the only possible line often. Such pressure
implies that the planner has less room to manoeuvre than ever before (Practitioner
9). It seems likely that variation in local authority practices accounts for some of the
differing views, but planners professional autonomy was also being undermined.
Added to this corporate influence was an increasing pressure from politicians in
planning processes. This is clearly conceptually contentious, but practitioners identi-
fied a stronger anti-development pressure than before, often conveyed through local
politicians. This was especially pronounced in relation to new housing, particularly
on greenfield sites in south-east England. Much of the English planning systems
reform was driven by a desire to address this issue. The driver for this reform element
lies in an increasingly well-organised anti-development lobby, often rather negatively
termed NIMBYism. Our interviewees were certain that planning was struggling with
this issue and that it was shaping planning outcomes in what they perceived to be
negative ways. These included its ability to provide relatively affordable housing,
but also to direct such development to less politically contentious sites that might be
sub-optimal in a number of other ways, such as being in flood-risk areas. Planners
struggled to assert other agendas in such situations. One interviewee suggested this
was further evidence of risk aversion on the part of local government planners: if we
say no to a development we wont get blamed its seen as green, the right thing, its
brave to stand up and say, actually this is great (Practitioner 3).4

4 Partially supported by a fall in planning permission approvals from 88 per cent in 1999/2000 to 83 per cent in
2008/09 (DCLG, 2009).
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 545

Reflection the contemporary UK planning profession:

evangelistic consultants and risk-averse bureaucrats?
As the above discussion shows, pressures on local government planners have increased
in line with a trajectory established perhaps 30 years ago. Such pressures have often
reduced the space in which they utilise specialist knowledge and exercise judgement.
Some private-sector interviewees felt that, consequently, they were left to argue for
the delivery of certain traditional planning system objectives, and indeed the means
to achieve them. They were thus the evangelists, rather in the manner of Davies
(1972) evangelistic bureaucrats, of a system less capable of being championed by the
public sector. They considered themselves ethically driven, and their motivations for
doing planning work aligned closely with a notion of the public interest: I believe in
housing the nation and not many are there to make this case. Sustainable develop-
ment is partly about meeting the needs of the present and we never define the needs
of the present (Practitioner 3).
Two other private-sector planners (Practitioners 7 and 10) identified a key role as
working with clients to improve final development outcomes in negotiation with the
LPA, to the benefit of all. But the private sector also seems to have adopted a role
of checking the power of local politics, especially regarding the anti-development
discourse cited earlier. Thus they increasingly saw their function as explaining the
system and its limitations to clients, straightening out injustices (often arising from
responses to targets where proposals had been refused), challenging the evidence base
and its appropriateness, and generally being a check on local democracy without
it lots of people would see the system as unfair (Practitioner 3; see Campbell and
Marshall, 2002, 105, for a similar finding).
Consequently, Practitioner 3 felt that public- and private-sector planners actually
had more in common than before, in that they both saw the need to achieve shared
goals in the English case this meant more affordable housing in particular and that
in trying to achieve this they were increasingly united against a common adversary:
short-term political expediency, most frequently manifesting as an anti-development
discourse. Increased outsourcing had also brought public and private together, leading
to greater unity, collegiality and reflexive learning (Steele, 2009, 200) among public-
and private-sector planners.
However, private-sector consultants were more critical of public sector planners
than vice versa. They perceived an aversion to risk which led to a say no attitude
(Practitioner 11), due to the presence and power of the anti-development discourse.
This was confirmed by Practitioner 3: planners never get into trouble for saying
no. One private-sector planner (Practitioner 10) noted that he had to wait for a
public-sector planner (known to him for some time) to receive a report from a third
organisation before he could make a judgement, where previously he would have
546 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

risked the decision unaided. At other times, the target-driven pressure to make a quick
decision led to greater propensity to refuse an application, as allowing it with condi-
tions would take more time and negotiation (see above).5
In local authorities where such pressures were felt most keenly, staff turnover could
be high: one interviewee noted good people in local authorities are choosing the exit
because they find themselves saying no rather than doing planning work (Practi-
tioner 3). An employee has, in Hirschmans (1970) terms, three strategies available to
them: exit, voice and loyalty. There was less room for voice from planners in this
period than previously, and so such planners were choosing exit, moving to local
authorities with different cultures, or to the private sector where constraints were
different (see Tewdwr-Jones, 2004 for a similar conclusion). That said, within our
empirical work, we did find planners in some public sector organisations with suffi-
cient space to exercise professional judgement (voice); one practitioner told of how
he controversially argued for more wind turbines on a particular site than the devel-
oper proposed, as he conceived his job as doing the best job he could for the commu-
nity (Practitioner 4). This example aside, risk aversion was a reality, also expressed by
the same practitioner in interview. This partly resulted from the increasing legislation
of planning activity, which in turn meant an increased threat of challenge to decision-
making, especially in an environment of constant change to planning procedures and
a subsequent lack of precedent (Shaw, 2006).
While our sample of interviewees was small, our feeling was that some local
authorities had changed more than others. In addition, junior-level planners were
generally still looked after better in the public sector and granted greater responsibility
and training. For them the judgement spaces in which they operated were probably
little changed, although even here a survey of young planners reported unnecessary
bureaucracy and politics and issues with local authorities as two things they would
change about planning (NPF, 2007). The squeeze on planners ability to be much
more than box-tickers may be felt most strongly at middle levels of large organisa-
tions, where the opportunities to steer and drive place-shaping are above them, while
the opportunities for significant learning and skill development may be below them.
This section has highlighted that, while changes to the planning system in England
in the 2000s were not revolutionary, when combined with wider shifts in local gover-
nance practice they did fundamentally change what was demanded from planners,
especially in local government, reducing public sector planners space to act. This
affected private-sector roles less dramatically. Our next section concludes the paper
by situating the above discussion in the context of a wider literature.

5 Such pressures were also noted in Queensland by Steele (2009), which she attributed in part to an under-resourced
public sector.
Reform processes and discretionary acting space in English planning practice, 19972010 547

Conclusions widened remits, reduced discretionary

space: the disjunction between vision and practice
The new vision for English planning tried to widen its scope to enhance its ability to
adopt a more integrated and strategic approach to place-making. For local authorities,
the original vision of the reform did potentially provide more opportunities to make
a difference through strategy-making than for some decades. However, some critics
fail to acknowledge what else was needed to take advantage of the new landscape. We
argue that a range of financial, political and human resources were absent from local
polities that might have enabled the new vision to become a reality. This conclusion
is pertinent to the successor Coalition Governments (2010-) attempt to reshape the
planning system again, even if some of the managerialist tendencies appear reduced.
Thus, many planners found themselves more rigidly constrained within the ever-
changing bureaucratic requirements of the new system, corporate steering, a strong
anti-development logic, continued policy centralisation, and regimes of performance
management.
Although planners have always advised and politicians decided, the above issues
restricted the acting space in which a public sector planner might exercise expert
judgement. Such discretionary spaces are characteristic of professional practice in
the state (Hoggett et al., 2006) wherein such spaces reduce the capacity to control the
behaviour of professionals and thus limit the extent to which managerialist practices
can penetrate (Newman, 2004; 2005). Laffin and Entwistle (2000) suggested that these
were largely retained in the 1990s in the professions they studied, but that professional
bodies were struggling to control areas of expertise. In planning, RTPI boldly tried
to take this ground but failed to hold back inroads into this professional discretionary
space. This continued a trend identified in the 1990s (Campbell and Marshall, 2002),
where planners were making compromises in their working practices, undermining
the professional judgement they may once have had. A new series of competen-
cies have come to the fore in planning practice, as it requires great skill to play the
performance targets game and to act as a successful mediator; but planning should be
more than box-ticking and ringmastery, of knowing a bureaucratic system and good
management skills (see Healey, 2010).
This shrinking of the discretionary spaces for many planners working in England
today is responsible for a lack of morale among many junior- and middle-level local
government practitioners (Tewdwr-Jones, 2004). In this context, continuous exhor-
tations to change the planning culture tend to further expand the gap between an
elite community, promoting the possibilities of planning, and practising planners,
whose everyday constraints and competencies are not adequately considered.
Constant reforms may be more distracting than helpful (Gunn and Hillier, 2012), and
culture change would take root more quickly if both the pace of system change was
548 Susannah Gunn and Geoff Vigar

slowed and a more nuanced conception of the potential drivers of change processes
was recognised. This recognition is a prerequisite for the sort of reflexive practice
demanded by system reformers, who have failed to properly account for the wider
changes going on in local governance and the complex positioning of planners in
everyday practice.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank Andy Inch for a literature review that underpinned the research project
and this paper, Suzanne Speak for her input to the research and the helpful comments of two
referees and the editor.

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