Awards for Planning Excellence for 2025. Find out what you need to know:
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You can submit now from our Awards for Planning Excellence landing page.
Entries open on 16 January.
We have streamlined our award entry process, so you simply:
- Select your best work completed between 1 January 2022 – 31 December 2024. For Young Planners, choose your best achievements over recent years.
- Choose the best category to showcase your work.
- Create your account on our entry platform. Don’t worry, you can edit your entry at any time before you make your final submission.
- Familiarise yourself with the judging criteria.
- View our tips on how to win.
- Complete and submit your entry along with some great images.
There are 15 planning related categories in total and our RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence are free to enter. See the full list here.
The closing date for entries is 13 March 2025.
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Yes, you can enter multiple projects and plans, with the exception of the Planning Consultancy of the Year award, where only one entry is permitted.
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How does a project or plan meet the timing eligibility criteria?
We are often asked for clarification over the timescales of projects and plans and judges often comment that entries can be too premature to judge.
The eligibility criteria require projects and plans to have been completed between 1 January 2022 – 31 December 2024. This is to ensure the Award entries are current. However, we appreciate this timescale needs some explanation.
Formal Planning Process must be completed
No project or plan entry will be judged if it has not been through the complete adoption / approval process i.e., received planning permission or formally adopted by the relevant body. This could potentially put the RTPI in a position of supporting a scheme which may not ultimately be supported through the statutory process. The Award judging process does not have the complete information which the statutory process has access to, neither does it undertake the scrutiny and consultation required. It should therefore not make a judgment in advance of this formal process.
However, there may be an element of the process which is entered before the planning permission is granted. For example, it may be an exemplary public consultation exercise which is entered – so not the project itself, but the consultation process, or it may be a new type of study or approach which informs the development’s design and of course adds benefits. Any submission must be very clear on this.
Physical Projects
If your submission is for a physical project (this could be a building, infrastructure, landscaping, a natural environment project, for example) and it has planning permission, it should be substantially complete, if not fully completed and being used.
It is difficult to judge a project which is not completed or being used because we do not know how it will be finally built out or used, or if any amendments or value engineering are undertaken which mean it is not the project you thought was worthy of an award. The actual outcomes and outputs achieved are very important.
We appreciate the substantial planning input into a project may well have taken place more than two years before a project is completed. If it is for a masterplan – consider entering this as a plan instead.
Plans
Plans cover a range of entries, they can be a development plan (or part), a masterplan, or a strategy.
They must either have received planning permission or have been adopted (as appropriate to the type of entry).
As with a project, they should be sufficiently established to demonstrate the outcomes you are asking it to be judged against – think about the outcomes being claimed in the entry. They do not need to be built out (for masterplans) or when the plan or strategy period has ended.
Strategies, for example, are better judged after they have demonstrated how they can be implemented i.e. how they have influenced developments or decisions. However, it is possible for masterplans or strategies to achieve outcomes without being built out e.g., through their public engagement, their policies for layout for integrating active travel, SuDS, district renewable heating etc. or how they are successfully integrating into existing communities.
With a development plan, you may want to think about an aspect of the plan which is innovative in its approach.
Evidence
You have the opportunity to provide supplementary evidence in the form of infographics or other visuals.
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The RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence has 15 award categories listed below, entries in the Nations and Regions are initially judged across 11 categories and awarded as:
- Best Plan
- Best Project
- Planning Authority of the Year
- Small Planning Consultancy of the Year
- Mid-Size Planning Consultancy of the Year
- Young Planner of the Year
The local winners are then put through for judging in the national awards along with the entries from the remaining four categories.
The judges then create a national shortlist from which the national finalists are selected and announced in October. The overall winners and commendations are announced at the national ceremony in November.
Categories:
Plans
- Excellence in Plan Making Practice
Projects
- Excellence in Planning for a Successful Economy
- Excellence in Planning for Health and Wellbeing
- Excellence in Planning for Heritage and Culture
- Excellence in Planning for the Natural Environment
- Excellence in Planning for Communities (small schemes under 50)
- Excellence in Planning for Communities (large schemes of 50 or more)
- Excellence in Digital Planning Practice*
- International Award for Planning Excellence*
People
- In-house Planning Team of the Year*
- Small Planning Consultancy of the Year
- Mid-Size Planning Consultancy of the Year
- Planning Consultancy of the Year*
- Planning Authority of the Year
- Young Planner of the Year
*Four categories that are direct to the national phase (they are not shortlisted as part of the nations and regions awards). These categories have no specific geographic base and will therefore not compete in the nations and regions competition.
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For plans and projects you should enter the region or nation that the plan or project is located in.
For teams and Young Planners, you can either enter in the region or nation where the team or person is based, or you can enter in the region or nation where the majority of your work takes place.
Please note that all entries can only be entered into one region or nation.
If you are unsure which region or nation to enter in then please get in touch with [email protected]
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Yes - joint entries are welcome. On our entry platform, Evessio, there will be a space to write all organisations who are involved with the submission. Please make sure that if you are submitting a joint entry you enter the organisation names as you wish then to be published and promoted.
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To enter into the categories of Plans or Projects, you do not need to be MRTPI. The other categories differ according to their eligibility status. To view this, click on the category and view the eligibility of how many (if any) MRTPI members you need to qualify for an entry.
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The judging process
The RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence has 15 award categories, entries in the Nations and Regions are initially judged across 11 categories and awarded as:
- Best Plan
- Best Project
- Planning Authority of the Year
- Small Planning Consultancy of the Year
- Mid-sized Planning Consultancy of the Year
- Young Planner of the Year*
These winners become national finalists.
The shortlisted entries are put through for judging in the national awards and will be judged against the others in their selected categories for the national finalist list. The remaining four categories are also judged to complete the national finalist list of 15 categories. The winners and commendations are announced at the national ceremony in November.
*All Young Planner of the Year winners will be entered into the national shortlist and will be judged by the national judges and the top five will become national finalists.
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Key dates 2025
16 January - RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence open for entries
13 March at 11.59pm - Entry deadline
April/May - Nations and regions judges site visits and/or interviews
15 May - Nations and regions shortlist announced
June/July - Announcing the winners in the Nations and Regions
August/September - National awards judging
Mid October - National finalists announced
November - National RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence ceremony
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The awards are judged by an independent panel of judges, and if they feel that the entries do not meet the benchmark for excellence, they are not required to name an entry as a winner.
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Terms and Conditions
Submissions
- Full submissions must be received by us by Thursday 13 March 2025.
- The RTPI reserves the right to use any images and logos you submit, for promotional purposes.
- The RTPI reserves the right to share submissions with our members via newsletters and The Planner.
- An entry will presume that there are no restrictions or fees payable for the reproduction of the photographs or any other submission materials.
- The RTPI retains permission to publish all submitted material and particulars of successful entries, including the judges’ reports. This may include online and print publication, and successful entrants may be offered other promotional opportunities.
- Winning and shortlisted entries may feature as case studies in future RTPI work demonstrating best practice and the value of planning.
- Submitted material will be retained by the RTPI and will not be returned.
- The RTPI is not liable for any costs you incur submitting this entry.
- The decisions of the judging panel are final and no correspondence will be entered into before or after the event.
- All information submitted is subject to the above terms and conditions and our Privacy Policy and GDPR Policy.
- The judges reserve the right to, in agreement with the entrant, vary the category in which the submission is judged from that indicated by the entrant.
Data Protection• We have collected information from you, in order to communicate with you about the Awards programme. We may also communicate with you about future events that are of a similar nature. If you no longer wish to receive communication from us regarding events then please let us know and we will remove you from our mailing list.
• As stated in RTPI’s privacy notice, we are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect. If you pay by credit or debit card, we will not retain your card details after processing your payment. You will need to resubmit this information for future transactions.
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Contact [email protected] or the co-ordinator or administrator for your region or nation. Find their details via the Find Your RTPI page.