6 - Commodification and casualisation: consultancies and agency staff in UK planning

Summary

Introduction

Although still understudied, there is an increasing awareness of the privatisation of planning in the UK, including the role of planning consultants in working for private developers and the outsourcing of some public planning services (a landscape we sketched in the previous chapter). However, the complexities of the changing planning landscape are such that the delivery of planning services does not simply involve private consultants working on distinct projects like a masterplan on behalf of a public or private client, but rather a deeply intertwined hybridity where there are increasingly blurred boundaries between the public and the private in the planning sector. This can best be exemplified by the figure of the ‘agency planner’ briefly introduced in the last chapter. An agency planner is someone employed by a private sector company who is then in effect seconded into a local authority planning department to undertake planning work for them on a temporary basis. They are not an employee of the council and can move on at short notice.

This is part of a complex web of interactions between the sectors which are increasingly opaque to the publics the planning system serves. Other arrangements may include call- off contracts and other arrangements whereby even if planning services at a particular LPA are not usually outsourced, on occasion some planning applications are sent to private sector employed planners to process on behalf of the authority (which is then responsible for and issues the decision). The applicant, and community members, may have no idea this is happening. Equally, beyond the development of particular documents as part of the plan- making process, policy planners may also not actually be employed by the LPA whose local plan they are helping to produce.

These arrangements reflect an increasing commodification of planning work, where it is being made and seen as ‘packageable’ for delivery processes. Individual planning applications may be seen as discrete pieces of work that can be done by anyone with sufficient qualifications or experience as a planner, regardless of where they work or who they work for.