Public Practice’s consultation response to the Planning White Paper focuses on skills and resourcing. This is because, in our experience, it is the people more than the policies that make the biggest difference to what is delivered on the ground. Good planners can work around an imperfect planning system, but a perfect planning system can’t work around a shortage of good planners.

We believe the White Paper has the potential to create better outcomes through planning, not necessarily as a result of legislative change, but by helping to transform the role of the public planner. But this will only happen if the new system is matched by a new national programme of investment to level up resourcing and enable planning authorities and communities to plan more proactively. This consultation response sets out seven steps towards building capacity for proactive planning:

• Create a new national investment programme to level up capacity
• Resource Authorities to produce design codes at speed and scale
• Establish a robust framework for public plans to be made in the public interest
• Present funding with a presumption in favour of building in house capacity
• Align new funding with new solutions for recruitment
• Set a mission for public planning to represent the diversity of the communities it serves
• Support public planners throughout their careers