And before anyone says ‘get a life’ which I have heard many times, this is an attempt to be constructive and raise the tenor of debate, not lower it.
The annual UK Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF), which took place in Leeds last month saw many of the great and good in town planning join multiple other professions in chewing the fat about the state of the development industry.
There was a specific session of the aforementioned great and good: from representatives of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government; the Local Government Association; the Planning Advisory Service etc, hosted by planning technology firm LandTech,
Their challenge, as a collective panel, was to set out the 10 key skills that experts believe are the most important for planners in 2026 and beyond. Or at least that was how it was written up by journalist covering the event, as I was not there myself!.
The skills listed were:
Project management: Place leadership & communication: Mediation & negotiation:
The ability to handle data: Professionalism: Soft & people-focused skills:
Problem solving / critical thinking: Understanding investment: Place branding:
Risk-taking in decisions.
I have to say that as someone at the coal face of actually doing the planning work, I really think they have missed a lot of the point. Sure, the areas listed are important, but they are largely generic and could apply to every profession in the development industry. And beyond.
What do Planners critically need more than anything else, I would suggest, are three skills:
What they failed to do, in my opinion, was identify those expertises, which the Planner specifically brings to the industry in that they are doing a great service of trying to make an increasingly complex system work in an environment where every time a new politician becomes Secretary of State for the Environment, they want to make their mark and change something.
(A call for stability to let the previous changes bed in before further alterations would be extremely welcome, but probably be p…… in the wind to use a favourite phrase of one of my local government colleagues).
But I digress! Those three expertises:
Technical Planning Knowledge: This seems to be seriously underplayed by the Panel. We are about making sustainable decisions and bringing to the party our own technical expertise. This includes understanding the ever-changing legislative framework, sufficient to know what is relevant and relatable is also very important. Sure, we have planning lawyers to review legal points when matters of legislation get complex, but at the very least Planners need to know what are the right questions to ask.
Planning balance: Planning decisions are all about evaluating and comparing and making a judgement between competing qualitative material considerations. How do you effectively balance all those varied issues? You go to any planning hearing or inquiry and that is what the respective planning experts are asked to do. This is where this skill is most exposed for all that it is worth. But equally it should be the test when any planning decision is made. How should you do that? This is a skill any Planner needs and to hone through significant practice and experience.
It should not be about the lowest common denominator, but a balance between advantages and disadvantages and can any revisions be made to satisfy one issue, without compromising other competing demands.
Understanding sufficiently the nature of the issues of relevant and related expertises: Clearly, there is a wide range of professions that are involved in the planning process from architects, archaeologists, drainage engineers, ecologists, heritage and noise consultants etc. No one individual is going to be an expert in more than one or two areas. However, to make informed choices on generally qualitative, not quantitative issues needs some understanding of the underlying principles of those related professions. If only to ask the right questions and potentially evaluate the different views of experts in the same field, who will give their opinion on a relevant topic. To be at all effective Planners need to have this understanding.
I know that not many will get to the end of this length of piece on LinkedIn, but if anyone does, I would welcome their reaction.