‘Clock-watching and box-ticking’: British local authority planners, professionalism and performance targets

Abstract

The speed of the statutory planning system has concerned UK Governments for decades. The Labour Government of 1997–2010 placed particular emphasis on increasing the efficiency of public services through performance targets. Whilst the subsequent Coalition Government of 2010–2015 removed many targets, those measuring the speed of planning application processing were kept. These performance targets have important potential implications in terms of the autonomy and space for discretionary judgement traditionally seen as intrinsic to the professional nature of planning. Empirical material exploring how British local authority planners responded to these targets suggests they have both restricted and empowered professionals and, whilst changes to practice have occurred, professional identities have remained more resilient. This contradictory picture highlights the importance of considering the role of frontline professionals in implementing reforms.

Keywords:

• Planning
• performance targets
• profession
• public sector reform
• great Britain

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editor Vincent Nadin and the two referees for their extremely helpful guidance on revising this paper (the interpretation of that guidance is, of course, my own).

Funding

This paper is based on research undertaken as part of a Ph.D. sponsored under the ESRC-ODPM joint scheme, award number PTA-039-2005-00001, with additional support to fund the in-depth interview research received from the University of London Central Research Fund.

Notes

1. ‘‘Notoriously, Michael Heseltine as the first Secretary of State for the Environment of the Thatcher government complained that “thousands of jobs every night are locked away in the filing trays of planning departments”’ (1979, in Carmona & Sieh, 2004, 118)