Planning reform without planners: no workforce pipeline at the scale required

The Home Builders Federation estimates a shortage of more than 2,200 planners in England and Wales, and MHCLG's 2025 capacity survey found about 48 per cent of planning authorities carrying one to three vacancies and 17 per cent more than six. Government's response, 300 graduate and apprentice planners through the LGA's Pathways to Planning and Public Practice with a £46m capacity package, is an order of magnitude short. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 allows locally set fees, and fee income alone cannot conjure labour supply.

Every reform in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, spatial development strategies, delegation schemes, new towns and 150 infrastructure decisions, lands on understaffed planning departments. Workforce is the rate-limiter on converting legislative wins into consented homes and infrastructure within this Parliament.

A national planning workforce programme: ringfenced full-cost-recovery fees, bursaries and apprenticeships scaled to about 2,000 additional planners, and shared specialist pools in ecology, heritage and viability that small districts can draw on.

// Build together: Counterparty: volunteer councils funding shared specialist pools and apprenticeships via full-cost fees already legal under PIA 2025.

Planning Act reforms land now on departments 2,200 planners short, training lead times are long, and government's response stays an order of magnitude too small.