Applied Through: Licentiate Route

Commended: Whole submission

Qualifications

• BSc (Hons) Planning, Environmental & Development - Birmingham City University
• MA Planning Built and Natural Environments - Birmingham City University

Experiences

To gain work experience I undertook a summer placement at Birmingham City Council where I learnt about planning in a local authority. Following the completion of my master’s degree, I started as Graduate Planner at Birmingham City Council which was a dual officer role working in development management and planning policy. A year later I was promoted to a Senior Planning Officer role and have worked in this role since.

My day to day role includes processing and determining a mixed caseload of minor and small-scale to major planning applications, negotiating with developers and providing planning advice. Whilst challenging at times, the experience I gained in this role allowed me to develop professionally and prepared me for my APC submission.  

APC Tips

Use your Reflective Journal – Make the most of your reflective journal by not only filling it in regularly but really using it to highlight the times when things did not go to plan and what you learnt from this. I found the case studies where everything went wrong were actually the best case studies I could then use for my submission as I had learnt so much.

Attend RTPI APC Events – I attended an RTPI webinar on the APC submission which provided top tips for a successful APC submission and how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls.

Submit when the time is right for you – Submit when you are confident that you have gained enough experience to demonstrate that you meet all the competencies not just when you have reached your two years’ experience. I delayed my submission by a year as I felt I could not meet all the competencies at that point.