The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) today celebrates World Town Planning Day - designed to celebrate and promote the vital role that planning plays in creating and sustaining communities that we all live and work in.
However, a few days earlier the RTPI issued their “State of the Profession 2023” Report which highlights some worrying trends. Not only has the number of public sector planners shrunk by 25% between 2009 and 2020, but overall pay has drastically declined - by c34% when tracking against inflation over the same period. Why are Councils across the country spending less and less on planning departments, when there is a clear need?
The Report itself is well worth a read (outside of my cherry picked headlines!) and raises important questions as to how we staff and resource planning departments. Could one solution be to require graduate planners to begin their careers at local planning departments, with a commensurate reduction in any outstanding student loans for time served?
Outside of an unsustainable salary competition with the private sector, we have to find a way of ensuring planners of all ages/backgrounds/experiences are incentivised to work with or for local planning authorities. The work that town planners do is far too important to be ignored.
• Planners are increasingly employed in the private sector (50%). The largest employers of planners are local authorities and consultancies. The number of planners working in the public sector shrunk by a quarter between 2009 and 2020. • The remuneration of planners in real terms has been in sharp decline. If salaries had followed inflation since 2005, the median planner should be making close to £50,000 annually, as opposed to the actual value of £33,000.
https://www.rtpi.org.uk/media/16015/state-of-the-profession-2023-final.pdf
unknownx500
