Call for Evidence - Life on the Front Line III

Long-serving (long-suffering?) readers of the blog and listeners to the podcast will recall that back in December 2021 I published the first Life on the Front blog, which informed episode 60 of the podcast a short time afterwards. I revisited the theme with a second blog and podcast a year later.

The basis of the initial exercise was, at the prompting of a listener, to explore the LPA staffing crisis and, in 'taking the temperature' of the profession, it certainly struck a nerve. That first blog, as of just now, has been viewed 19,453 times, which is much, much more than my typical wittering.

Now seems like a good time to revisit what life is like on planning's front line for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the Government has been in power for a year now and so it is legitimate to ask whether the wave of optimism that immediately followed the election was justified.

You might remember that very early on in his ministerial tenure Matthew Pennycook wrote to the RTPI stating that:

"The workloads and welfare of planners have caused real concern in recent years and it will be vital for further reforms of our planning system to ensure that planning remains a fulfilling career path and an attractive opportunity for the next generation of place-makers."

Have the workload and welfare of planners increased or decreased over the past year? If it is too early to tell, are there at least signs of improvement in both?

Secondly, a new initiative called the Planning Alliance has recently been created. It's LinkedIn page states the following:

"Welcome to the Planning Alliance, a cross-sectoral, multi-disciplinary group of built environment stakeholders who are focused on strengthening and improving public sector planning to deliver sustainable, inclusive growth for the UK. The Planning Alliance exists to renew our public planning capacity — to make it fit for the future, valued by society, and capable of supporting and shaping great places for all. The case for change is clear - Council’s struggle to recruit or retain talent, workloads are unmanageable, and there are poor perceptions of the planning public sector. The challenges facing the public planning sector is a threat to the future of the industry’s ability to attract, develop, and retain talent. From this position, a new broad sectoral alliance has emerged."

There is a meeting of the Alliance on 13 October 2025 and the conversations on the day about recruitment, retention and workload challenges will, to my unsophisticated mind, be more productive the more is known about what the current recruitment, retention and workload challenges are.

This then is a 'Call for Evidence' to inform a third Life on the Front Line blog and podcast, the latter of which will be timed to coincide with that Planning Alliance summit in October.

What is life like right now on planning's front line?

Are you the head of a directorate still having to make budget cuts despite 'the end of austerity'? Are you carrying vacant posts and cannot fill them? Do you have a budget to prepare a local plan even if you knew what was expected of you in preparing one?

Are you a senior officer toying with an agency staff contract because, with local government reorganisation is looming, you might as well earn more money for the same work whilst there is work? 

Are you a junior officer still largely working from home? Can you do what you need and want to do from there?

On the other side of the fence, what is it like securing consent when LPAs do not offer a pre-app service and do not allow schemes to be amended post-submission? If LPAs do offer pre-apps (and PPAs) do they represent value? What are the actual obstacles to securing consent and getting on site now? 

On the other side of the coin, you might be leaping out of the bed in the morning and skipping in to the office (if you go to an office...) at the minute. If so do please share why as well. I am very conscious that Life on the Front Line needs to highlight the good as well as the bad. I would like to celebrate what needs celebrating and shine a light on what needs not.

Perhaps think of it in this way. Regardless as to what you do and who you do it for, if you work in planning and if you were to write to the Housing & Planning Minister, the Chief Planner and the Chief Executive of the RTPI what would you want to tell them? What should they keep doing? What should they start doing? What should they stop doing? You are, of course, perfectly at liberty to write to them now yourselves, but you might not necessarily want to put your name to what you really want to write so write to me (samstafford@hotmail.com) with what you really want to write and I will cut and paste everything that you send me apart from your name and add all of the submissions that I receive to this blog, which will become a rolling, real-time compendium of the issues, good and bad, that are shaping the profession right now.

Three final things. Firstly, if you do not want your submission to be anonymised and are happy for your name to be attached to it, please let me know. Secondly, if you would like to be involved in the Life on the Front III podcast recording when I do put it together, please also let me know. Thirdly, please share this invitation to get involved as widely as you can.

Thanks, Everybody.  

Submission 1

"Planners, Punchbags, and Public Outrage: When Did Rudeness Become a Right?"

“It normally takes people an hour to hate me,” said barrister Killian Garvey. “Now it’s before I’ve walked through the door.”

Welcome to the world of planning — where policy meets passion, and civility goes to die.

Last month, Killian Garvey posted a thoughtful reflection on the reality many of us face: showing up to work expecting abuse. He’s not exaggerating. I’ve faced my share of barking dogs (literal and metaphorical), planning committees that teeter into blood sport, and consultation events where someone has shouted at me for destroying the British countryside before I’ve even opened my mouth.

But here's the thing: why have we allowed it to become normal?

Why do planners — and planning lawyers, enforcement officers, conservation officers, tree officers, transport officers, even committee clerks — walk into the public arena expecting to be insulted?

This article isn’t just a grumble. It’s a challenge to everyone involved in our planning system — residents, councillors, developers, and professionals alike — to reflect on what we’ve become. And maybe, just maybe, to change it.

Civility Fatigue: When Did Planning Become a Contact Sport?

Let me take you back.

It was a drizzly Tuesday in late October, probably 1997. I was principal planning officer at the time, and I’d been sent to deal with a man in a respectable cul-de-sac in Stockton on Tees. His complaint? A tree under a TPO was shedding leaves into his gutter. The horror.

He didn’t want to prune it, or even discuss a compromise. He wanted the whole tree gone. “It’s ruining my life,” he said. “If you don’t do something about it, I’ll ruin yours.”

That meeting — absurd and strangely chilling — was the final straw. I left local government shortly after.

And while that seems quaint now compared to the threats, live-streamed abuse, and social media pile-ons we face today, it was a canary in the coal mine. The sense that planning officers were no longer seen as people — just faceless gatekeepers to be battered or bypassed.

Let’s be clear: planning has always been contested. Conflict is part of the job. But there’s a difference between passionate opposition and outright hostility.

Once, we disagreed face-to-face. Now, the rage arrives before the meeting starts. Before the first slide is shown. Before you’ve even stepped out of the car.

Keyboard Warriors and the Age of Online Fury

There’s no denying it: the internet has changed how we object.

Where once we hand-wrote letters or turned up to a committee meeting in person, we now dash off furious objections over a sandwich. Social media is the new battlefield. Emails are fired like missiles. LinkedIn has become a place where developers openly ridicule planning professionals — sometimes naming them, sometimes subtweeting, always unkind.

A chief planner friend of mine told me recently: “Since we started putting our planning committees on YouTube, I spend two days after each one fielding complaints. Not about the decisions — but about my facial expressions. One resident logged a complaint that I ‘raised an eyebrow sarcastically’ when a councillor mentioned traffic.”

Imagine that. A formal complaint… about an eyebrow.

It’s not just the volume. It’s the tone.

You see it in emails full of red capitals and threats of judicial review before the officer’s even finished their assessment. You hear it when someone says, “I pay your salary” — as though that gives them licence to be abusive. You read it when a developer describes a planner as “anti-growth” because they asked for a viability statement.

Planning is no longer the quiet art of negotiation. It’s theatre. It’s combat. It’s content.

And we wonder why no one wants to work in LPAs anymore.

Blame John Major’s Cones Hotline (Sort Of)

For those of us with long memories, perhaps the shift began in the ‘90s. When John Major launched his infamous Cones Hotline, it was the first official signal that every member of the public had a right — perhaps even a duty — to question every orange cone and temporary traffic light in Britain.

What was meant as a bit of consumer-friendly accountability quickly mutated into a national pastime: objecting. To anything. And everything.

Combine that with the rise of the internet, a culture of permanent outrage, and an endless stream of televised committee meetings, and you’ve got a planning system that now feels less like democratic consultation and more like Britain’s Got Grievances.

But here’s the rub: our system does invite engagement. The NPPF talks about fostering strong, vibrant and healthy communities. It encourages early, proportionate, and meaningful involvement. We want people to care. We want local voices. We want passion.

We just didn’t mean this.

Developers Behaving Badly: The Other Side of the Fence

Let’s not pretend all the rudeness comes from the public.

Developers — some, not all — can be equally guilty. I’ve seen agents mock enforcement officers on LinkedIn. I’ve read posts describing planning officers as “anti-business” for refusing to validate an incomplete application. And I’ve been in meetings where the snide remarks were barely disguised.

The same developers who say “we need more planners” are often the first to throw junior officers under the bus when a report doesn’t go their way.

There’s a dangerous narrative forming — especially online — that paints LPAs as lazy, obstructionist, or incompetent. The reality? Most planning departments are clinging on by their fingernails. Under-resourced. Underpaid. Overwhelmed.

Want to speed things up? Start by treating planners like human beings. Like professionals. Not like barriers to your bonus.

38 Years In: Why I Pity the New Starters

When I started out in planning, there was at least the illusion of professional respect.

You wore a tie. You carried a clip folder. You were offered tea at site visits.

Now? You bring a risk assessment.

I pity the graduates entering the field now. They didn’t sign up for this. They came in because they cared about places, people, and policies. And within months they’re dodging furious parish councillors, being accused of conspiracy by Facebook groups, and watching senior officers burn out.

The NPPF asks us to “deliver sustainable development.” It asks us to balance housing need, biodiversity, design, heritage, transport, flood risk, and a thousand other considerations.

But it says nothing about how to cope with being called a disgrace on a Tuesday night in a village hall because you approved a barn conversion.

What’s the Solution?

We don’t need bodyguards at every inquiry or committee meeting (though I’ve seen them). We don’t need planners to carry panic alarms (though some do).

What we need is a collective resetting of the tone.

1.Inspectors should be empowered to call out abuse. If members of the public are rude at hearings, they should be warned and removed. The powers exist — we just never use them.

2.LPAs should publish codes of conduct for public engagement. Make it clear that debate is welcome, but abuse is not. Just as councillors have rules of behaviour, so too should participants at public events.

3.Developers should hold themselves accountable. If you're going to criticise planners on social media, do it constructively. Better yet, do it privately. A frustrated DM planner won’t respond well to being called out in front of 12,000 followers.

4.Chief Planning Officers need backup. Stop apologising for having a facial expression. Let’s focus on what matters: the decision, not the eyebrows.

The Final Word: A Manifesto for Mutual Respect

I’ll end with this.

I’m not asking everyone to be polite all the time. Passion matters. Local democracy matters. Debate matters.

But planners are not the enemy. We’re not nameless bureaucrats shuffling paper. We’re the people making sure your children have homes to live in. That your streets don’t flood. That your towns retain some sense of place. That your neighbour doesn’t build a three-storey extension with a glass balcony overlooking your bedroom.

We’re trying. Most of us are trying very hard.

So next time you see a planning officer at a hearing, or a lawyer like Killian, or a beleaguered enforcement team at a public exhibition — try this:

Don’t shout.

Don’t sneer.

Don’t send the 3,000-word email with bold red fonts and seven PDFs at midnight.

Just say, “Hello.”

We might even raise an eyebrow. Politely, of course.

Postscript

To the man with the TPO tree — I still remember your face. To the objectors screaming at me during a public consultation event - You didn’t just break my tolerance. You changed how I see the street.

I now look at perfectly ordinary neighbours and wonder: are they potential objectors?

That’s what the planning system has done to me.

Let’s not let it do the same to the next generation.

Steve Hesmondhalgh