The Scottish Funding Council, the body that distributes funding from the Scottish Government to the country's colleges and universities has announced that it will be reforming the system used to allocated funding for higher education courses –targeting planning education funding for the largest cut of any sector.

** APRIL 2010 UPDATE**

The Scottish Funding Council has announced that it will be delaying the introduction of the proposed subject funding changes. Responding to the announcement, Brian O'Callaghan, RTPI Head of Education and Lifelong Learning said:

“The announcement from the SFC postponing any changes to the funding allocation for universities in Scotland is welcome and follows a vigorous RTPI campaign against the proposed cuts. We pointed out in our response to the consultation that the data used to underpin the funding cuts to architecture, planning and built environment courses was incomplete and unfit for purpose. Many RTPI members and students in Scotland wrote to Ministers and their MSPs expressing their concern that cuts of this magnitude would represent a significant threat to planning education in Scotland, and this has had a real impact, with parliamentary questions being asked about the failure to assess in any way the impact such cuts would have on the Scottish planning system and economy.

Whilst we are pleased that the SFC has accepted that the data was flawed and that the postponement will allow a further set of data to be collected from universities, we are very concerned at the suggestion that planning and architecture be separated into different bands, with planning education receiving less funding than architecture. We believe there is little evidence to justify such action, and that to do so would introduce further complexity into the system, when simplicity was the stated aim of the proposed changes. This runs the risk of introducing more bureaucracy and thus more costs into the system – and will further undermine the Scottish Government’s own ambitions to increase both skills and capacity within the Scottish planning system, at a time when Minister Stewart Stevenson has re-iterated that planning is key to Scotland’s economic recovery.’

You can see the SFC's announcement here.

• Brian O'Callaghan (RTPI Head of Education and Lifelong Learning), Roger Kelly and representatives from Scottish planning schools will be meeting SFC representatives at the end of April to discuss funding of planning courses and stressing that major cuts would seriously affect the provision of planning education in Scottish universities.

Previous campaign update below

What is proposed?

The SFC currently uses 25 different undergraduate and postgraduate ‘price groups’ to allocate different levels of funding for different subjects. It proposes to ‘simplify’ the system by reducing to just four ‘subject price groups’, ranging from £15,800 funding per student for Group A subjects, to £5000 for Group D subjects.

In the consultation paper ‘Teaching funding subject price groups for higher education institutions’, released in December 2009, it has proposed that subjects falling under ‘Built Environment’ – (Architecture, Built Environment and Planning) will be placed in Group D – the lowest of the funding groups.

• This would equate to a reduction from £6415 to £5000 per full time student on Scottish planning courses – a 22% cut.

What the RTPI has said

The RTPI believes that the proposed funding cuts will have a significant and negative impact upon the provision of planning education within Scotland at a time when the nation faces major environmental, regeneration and development challenges.

Furthermore the move undermines the Government’s own targets on reducing carbon emissions and quality of place, and even worse, comes just after major reorganisation of Scotland’s planning system.

The RTPI believes that the research methods used by the SFC to underpin the proposals were significantly flawed, based as they were on incomplete date from just one year.

• See our response to the consultation here.

We have also made it clear to the SFC that the proposed cuts would further disadvantage Scottish university planning courses which are already less well funded than their equivalents in England. The Institute considers that this would run contrary to the Scottish Government’s own key objective of ‘place making’ and would have a serious impact on the training and recruitment of town and country planners in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has legislated to deliver a much more sustainable built environment and Scottish trained urban planners are at the forefront of delivering solutions to the issue of global urbanisation – both of which would be put at risk by such a move. 

As such, the RTPI feels strongly that planning and architecture courses (which are also threatened with large funding cuts) must be placed in the proposed Group C and not relegated to the bottom division.

What we have done

We have been active in opposing the proposed cuts, through a broad based campaign that has mobilised RTPI members and students, fellow built environment professionals, and MSP’s.

Actions to date

• Encouraged members to email Mike Russell MSP (Cabinet Secretary for Education) and their local MSPs to express their concerns about the proposed cuts

• Engaged with the media – resulting in Herald front page article.

• Lobbied MSPs on the cuts – gained support of Cross Party Construction Group and Convenor Marilyn Livingstone MSP agreed to write to Scottish Funding Council and Mike Russell MSP. She has also tabled a parliamentary motion against the cuts which the RTPI is encouraging members of parliament to sign.

• Sarah Boyack MSP (a former planning lecturer at Heriot Watt University) is backing our campaign and has tabled parliamentary questions on the cuts – see here, here and here – answers to which show that the Government has made no assessment of the economic impact of the cuts, nor the possible impact upon future workforce planning requirements for town planners or reducing carbon emissions

• We have written directly to Mark Batho, Chief Executive at the Scottish Funding Council seeking an urgent meeting involving representatives of the built environment sector in Scotland and hope to arrange a date for this soon.

What members can do to help

Please go to this page to find our details of how you can email the Education Minister Mike Russell to express your opposition to the cuts.

It would also be very helpful if you could email your local MSPs and ask them to sign the parliamentary motion S3M-05603 against the cuts if they haven’t already done so. You can find their contact details by entering your postcode here.

We are expecting the Scottish Funding Council to announce their consultation response by March 2010. We understand they have been taken aback by the opposition expressed to the proposals, particularly those relating to the built environment sector.

We will therefore continue to fight these cuts which we believe would put the future of planning education in Scotland at risk. The proposals are ill-thought through, short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating for the Government’s own objectives of making Scotland a better place to live.

We hope you will support us in this vital campaign!

ENDS

For further information please contact:

Jamie Hodge, Communications & Public Affairs Officer, RTPI

jamie.hodge@rtpi.org.uk

Author:

Jamie Hodge

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

19-Apr-10

Categories:

Education 

Sections:

News & Media , The RTPI

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