US and Canadian planners

The advice we give to UK planners wishing to work abroad applies equally to qualified US and Canadian planners seeking work here: there is no substitute for being in the country when job-hunting. We suggest that planners take any possible opportunity they can, including holidays, family visits, conferences or short study tours, to visit the country of their choice to research the possibilities. Quite apart from any other consideration, it is usual in the UK to attend an interview before a job offer is made, and this is difficult to organise at a distance. However, in view of the distances involved, we must assume that it will be expensive to organise a short visit, and time-consuming to plan a long one, so the basic research will have to be done while still at home.

Finding potential employers and relevant courses 

The DirectGov website gives an A-Z list of local authorities, linking straight to most of them. This will quickly give you contact details for local planning departments. The RTPI Planning consultants website lists consultants in the private sector.  UK planning schools are listed in the Education section of this web-site. Many offer short courses as well as full-length undergraduate and/or graduate courses. 

Hints on UK geography and place names

The names of UK local authorities do not always correspond to familiar names of towns, cities and counties. This may make searching a little difficult at first. For example, 'Vale of White Horse' is south-west Oxfordshire (towns of Abingdon, Faringdon and Wantage); 'Dacorum' is west Hertfordshire (Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead) and so on. London consists of the City of London, the City of Westminster, and 31 other Boroughs from Barking & Dagenham to Wandsworth.  Greater Manchester covers ten metropolitan authorities including the cities of Manchester and Salford and the Boroughs of Tameside, Oldham, Bury etc.  Details can be found on the AGMA website - the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities.  Maps showing local government boundaries are available from the Oultwood and Gwydir websites. 

Qualification requirements

You do not need a British planning qualification to obtain work in the UK, nor do you need to be a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. However, if you intend to make your career here, it would generally be expected that you would work towards Institute membership in due course; you will notice that in job advertisements for more senior positions, membership of the appropriate professional institute is often mentioned as a requirement. The Membership section of this web-site gives full details of the membership application procedure.

[Canadian Planners] Special arrangements have been made for planners with full membership of the Canadian Institute of Planners / Institut Canadien des Urbanistes to progress to full membership of RTPI. Read more