The Collaborating Planner?: Practitioners in the Neoliberal Age by Ben Clifford & Mark Tewdwr-Jones

Author:Ben Clifford & Mark Tewdwr-Jones [Clifford, Ben & Tewdwr-Jones, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regional Planning, Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, Political Science
ISBN: 9781299545762
Google: zkBlBAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 18539026
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2013-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Anna spoke similarly, calling planning the ‘Cinderella service’ compared to competing local authority functions.

Further interview evidence suggested that the targets were not just useful in terms of safeguarding resources for planning, but also in terms of setting out what resource planning should have within the council:

“They’d say, ‘Look you’re responsible for that, this is your directive, we want you to determine 80 per cent of the applications in eight weeks, and get the development plan.’ Fine, okay, and then I could go to the chief exec and say, ‘Look I’ve got this target, this is the resource I think I need to do that’.” (James)

Other, similar examples given in interview demonstrated targeted performance being used not just to safeguard, but also to gain resources for planning departments. A number of interviewees spoke of how councillors and chief executives were concerned that planning should achieve a good performance against the targets. Simon said the targets had changed what councillors wanted from the service:

“They have had a substantial impact, because previously in the development control service, the view of members was that it was a function of the council to negotiate acceptable schemes with developers, however long that took. Now, they take the view that they want us to be one of the top performing authorities in terms of speed of decision making.”

Furthermore, under the BVPI system in England, the planning indicators did not just count individually, but each local authority was also given an overall score based on performance against all targets – the CPA score. This score seems to have mattered to council leadership teams, and Dick explained that because planning performance could have an impact on the overall CPA score, poor performance (or the threat of it) could be used to get extra resources into planning.

This overall argument, that targets could be used to lever in extra resources to planning, and raise its profile, is reflected in the literature, with Carmona commenting that: ‘If no attempt is made to measure the performance of planning, then planning will have a hard time making the case that it is a service worthy of public investment’ (2007, p 4). This linked to a theme evident in the interview data that everyone had targets, so planning should not be left out. It was almost as if having targets was seen as a badge of legitimacy, confirming planning’s importance within the bigger public service. In part, this could be symptomatic of a wider pervasive new public management-type culture where the subjectivities are such that no alternative is even perceived. But it may be more conscious ideas about the status of planning (targets confirming the importance of planning) and about the ability to bring in, or at least defend, resources.

One further way, evident in the interview material, that the targets appeared to be being used by planners was in terms of management within planning departments. Patrick, a planning manager, talked about how the targets allowed him to “monitor everything”:

“It means I monitor everything. I can

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