A career in planning

Starting out in a council, you will be a graduate planner: someone with an undergraduate degree who is going to work towards their RTPI-accredited master’s degree. This is where the Pathways to Planning programme will begin your career. It doesn’t matter what you studied at degree level: you will be supported to learn on the job and your postgraduate study will upskill you as a professional planner too. You’ll work on a range of projects independently, but you’ll also be supported by a wider team and have a dedicated mentor so you can grow into your role. 

During the first two years of your career, you will be completing all or the majority of your postgraduate study. This is fully paid for by the Pathway to Planning scheme and your council. There are two ways that councils can fund your postgraduate study: they can select a two-year part-time master’s degree, or they can select a Chartered Town Planner apprenticeship (entry point 2). If your council choose a part-time master’s course for your training, you will travel to their chosen university one day per week during term time. If your council selects a Chartered Town Planner apprenticeship for your postgraduate study, you will spend 20% of your working time learning year-round (the equivalent to one day per week). You will complete your master’s degree in years one and two, following the same timescale of a part-time master’s degree. In year 3 (and possibly year 4), you will continue to receive support from your university and council to complete your personal accreditation (MRTPI). 

At the end of the Pathways to Planning scheme, you will have accumulated two to three years of work experience in a council and a master’s degree in Planning. This puts you on a strong career track as a Planning Officer. As a Planning Officer, you’ll be paid a higher salary which usually increases at intervals each year, and you’ll have more responsibility in your work. It’s also your chance to finish your RTPI accreditation, if you have not done so already. Your council will support you through this process and it will enable your career to progress at a faster pace.

There are so many different aspects to a council’s planning service. Some councils operate these areas quite independently, and some take a more collaborative approach. It depends on the size of the council, its objectives and overall staffing structure. Most planners will find one aspect of planning which they enjoy the most, and they will specialise within this, but many will move between aspects or disciplines in their career. Pathways to Planning will provide all graduates with a variety of work experience so graduates can discover where within planning they best fit. 

Development Management, often shortened to ‘DM’, is perhaps the most well known aspect of a council’s planning services. This is the part of the council where planning applications come, are reviewed and decided upon. Around 95-98 per cent of planning applications are decided by Planning Officers, which means you carry immediate responsibility for the development of your community. Each officer sits as part of a team, so there are a lot of colleagues to lend support, particularly on tricky cases or when you’re learning to manage applications for the first time. 

Planners who work in validation are responsible for logging all the planning applications that the council receives. Most applications are received electronically via a national software portal called Planning Portal. This sounds very straightforward, but an average of 60 per cent of planning applications are submitted without the full set of information that the council needs. People who work in validation work to ensure that all planning applications are completed properly. Sometimes, Development Management teams cover this area of work; sometimes administrative staff are responsible for this area; and sometimes a council will have a stand-alone Validation team.

Planning policy teams can be called a variety of names, including Local Plan teams or Spatial Planners. They all perform the same function: to develop and produce policy documents for the council to use. Examples of the types of policies that these teams produce are Local Plans, Development Plans, Guidance and Design Codes. They might not have very interesting names, but these documents are fascinating pieces of strategy and vision that set the trajectory for development in a local area for decades to come. Planning policy teams are also often responsible for monitoring how their plans and policies are implemented, gathering data to report back to central government.  

Some planners work in a more specialised area, dealing with Geospatial Information Systems (or GIS for short). GIS is a type of mapping software that Development Management and Policy teams use to support their work. It can give planners a map or spatial representation of what developments will look like, and therefore their impact on how a place or community will look and function. Sometimes GIS planners work directly in Planning teams, and sometimes they work for a council’s central digital services team. There’s a huge demand for planners with this fascinating GIS skill set.  

Enforcement, compliance and monitoring are all terms for the Planning team that addresses developments that breach a planning permission. This team, for example, will deal with unauthorised development (when someone builds a structure without getting planning permission first). It also deals with developments that have not correctly implemented the planning permissions they were supposed to follow. Planning Officers who work in this area have the authority to require developments to be demolished and rebuilt if necessary.

Within both Development Management and policy teams, Planning Officers can begin to become specialists within certain work areas, if they so wish. The specialist areas covered by a local council depend on what kind of urban and rural landscapes exist within the local area. Typical specialist services would include archaeology, heritage, urban design, ecology, transport, climate change and environmental health matters.