Profit or public service? Tensions and alignment in private planning practice

ABSTRACT

The growth of employment opportunities for planners working in the private sector has resulted in a rapid change in the composition of the planning profession in the UK, with over 40% of Royal Town Planning Institute members now employed in private practice. Existing writing on private planning practice is somewhat circumspect, with the private sector being associated largely with a profit-driven approach. Drawing on interviews with private sector planners, this paper argues that this fails to reflect the lived reality of private sector planners, and in so doing sets out an alternative and more nuanced characterisation of private practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• practice
• private sector
• public interest

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. That professional body estimates that ‘About three quarters of planners [in the UK] are RTPI members’ (RTPI, 2019, p. 6).