Kevin McCloud on Planners

[Ferdinand]

Interesting.

 

Kevin McLoud of clan McCloud:

 

Quote

 

 

Council planners are the most understaffed, underpaid, overworked, abused and depressed workers in Britain, which is a cause for concern because they are responsible for creating and determining the quality of environments we live in, according to a panel of experts at the Hay festival.

 

“The average chief planning officer earns the same salary as a Tesco bakery manager and has done for the past 15 years,” Kevin McCloud, the presenter of Channel 4’s Grand Designs, told an audience at the literary festival in Wales.

 

“The difference is that Tesco has a full complement of bakery managers, whereas across the country our planning departments roughly operate at 50% of what they should be doing, especially after the cuts ... they were a soft target.”

McCloud was sharing a stage with the sustainable development entrepreneur Solitaire Townsend and Juliet Davenport, the founder of the company Good Energy. 

 

Townsend said she had spent a month in a UK planning department and “it was the tiniest, most understaffed, most underfunded, most depressed group of people I have ever worked with”.

 

The rest is here.

 

Ferdinand

[ultramods]

Why are they so understaffed, surely people and companies would pay more for a faster service?

[billt]

Planning fees are set by central government, so there's no room for personal charging scales at the moment.

 

They're understaffed because councils are under considerable financial pressure and one of their first targets is to get rid of staff. Quite a few planning staff have been made redundant by our council.

 

Of course the number of applications will be increasing as you seem to need planning permission for the most trivial of changes these days, so there is more work for less staff.

[ultramods]

@billt I wasn't suggesting that individual councils start setting their own prices  

[MikeSharp01]

Don't worry, if some people get their way, we will soon be a very different country and then it will be a free for all, well not quite free but  nonetheless open to those who can pay to oil wheels. 

[newhome]

3 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Don't worry, if some people get their way, we will soon be a very different country and then it will be a free for all, well not quite free but  nonetheless open to those who can pay to oil wheels. 

 

Isn’t that how planning works already? 

[MikeSharp01]

Ratoons thow hast spotted the flaw in my discourse. I will send myself back to go without collecting £200 or using it to make a planning application.

[PeterW]

My local council - and the planner I deal with - had 42 cases on her caseload before Christmas and asked me if I had any jobs going ....  Oddly, this is one area that private sector takeover could potentially help with as it would regularise and standardise across the piece. 

[lizzie]

Some local authorities do already use a bit of private sector help,  Its not uncommon for cases to be outsourced to local planning consultants and to former LA planners who were made redundant and have set them selves up in business.

 

Somehow LA budgets seem to cope with paying consultants rather than salaried staff.

Edited June 3, 2018 by lizzie

[nod]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Interesting.

 

Kevin McLoud of clan McCloud:

 

The rest is here.

 

Ferdinand

Come on

its a pretty cushy job though

 

[newhome]

2 minutes ago, nod said:

Come on

its a pretty cushy job though

 

 

Try and get someone from building control after 4pm ....... 

[Hecateh]

I (briefly) worked for British Steel in the 80's.

 

I stuck it out for about 5 months.  I was bored stupid. 

Being Nationalised, there was a similar work ethic to (some) local authority departments.  

 

Bonuses were paid monthly on the performance of the whole department, at the year end they were consolidated into pay - along with a pay rise and a rise based on length of time in the job (None of this was related to individual performance)

 

We were told not to answer the phone if it was 15 minutes or less to your lunch break and the whole switchboard shut down at half past four, as we finished at five.

 

Other staff complained about their workload if they had another task arrive before they had finished the previous one.  In general, people only answered the phone if they had nothing to do.  If they were (shock horror) 'busy' then generally they ignored it.

 

 

[nod]

38 minutes ago, newhome said:

 

Try and get someone from building control after 4pm ....... 

Yes exactly 

8 to 4 

I can’t rember ever working those hours 

[newhome]

When they closed an office down at work many of the guys were made redundant. One of them applied for a job at the Foreign Office and I was asked to be a referee that resulted in extensive questioning for the security vetting (they came to my house to do it!). During this long and protracted process I said that I was surprised that the individual wanted to work in the public sector as they were hard working, highly skilled, and worked many additional (unpaid) hours. The guy said that the civil service was no longer like that and everyone worked very hard. The individual got the job and a few months later I asked them how it was. Turns out it was exactly as I had imagined and everyone barely did their hours. The individual said that they now worked their contracted hours and no more and was considered to be ultra hard working and productive despite doing a lot less than when they had worked with me as their output was much higher than many there. 

[Ferdinand]

4 hours ago, lizzie said:

Some local authorities do already use a bit of private sector help,  Its not uncommon for cases to be outsourced to local planning consultants and to former LA planners who were made redundant and have set them selves up in business.

 

Somehow LA budgets seem to cope with paying consultants rather than salaried staff.

 

My experience of that is that contractors hired for day to day tasks, ie not managers or specialists, are likely to be cheaper than salaried staff. They are likely to get a sum not greater enough than the salary to allow for the overheads, pension package etc.

 

I have had startling answers revealing low daily rates from, for example, contract social workers or supply teachers.

 

My experience is older, though, than the recent rulings that contract workers are entitled to paid holidays and sick leave. Not sure whether local authorities recognise these extras.

 

F

Edited June 4, 2018 by Ferdinand

[lizzie]

I know a firm of Chartered Town Planners who cover a good part of the workload of a neighbouring authority. Its not menial or clerical it is the planning side of it.  I also know several (former) senior planners at a different authority who after taking their ‘package’ now work freelance for their former authority who outsource planning work to them.  None work in the offices of the authority employing them, they work from home/their own company offices. They are paid as professionals per job just as they would be by a private client although they may do discounted rates for volume work. That is a different scenario to contract or agency workers as in social work or supply teaching who often come via a third party agency and are paid less, the pension and employment rights are one of the main drivers for employers using that type of arrangement. Near me JLR are very big employers, most of the un and semi skilled staff are ‘agency’ and can be laid off at a moments notice without penalty, they have no employment rights. There has been a lot in the papers recently about changes to stop this exploitation.

 

I know a senior social worker, took a big fat redundancy and is now back working at her old desk via an ‘agency’.....nursing is rife with this too.  I know several senior nurses who again took the big package and now back running their old wards for more money via the agency. Its a scandal really.

 

[Hecateh]

One of my brothers worked in planning for a local authority (roads not residential).  Took early retirement at 50 with a big payout and was back a couple of weeks later, as a consultant doing the same job for more money and no (or at least much less) responsibility

[newhome]

1 hour ago, lizzie said:

I know a senior social worker, took a big fat redundancy and is now back working at her old desk via an ‘agency’.....nursing is rife with this too.  I know several senior nurses who again took the big package and now back running their old wards for more money via the agency. Its a scandal really.

 

That’s not unique to the public sector however as there are many individuals here who took redundancy and are now back here either contracting or via one of our 3rd party contracts. The difference is that this is a private company so it’s not the public purse paying them off.