All eyes were back on the red box for the 2025 Autumn Budget

Robbie Calvert is the RTPI's head of policy and public affairs

So, another year and it was all eyes back on the red box for the 2025 Autumn Budget. Not least for us here at the RTPI as we look to the government to turn around years off disinvestment in planning services and severe workforce and capacity issues, identified in our recently published State of the Profession 2025. We've been continually raising capacity issues with Parliamentary Committee Inquiries, in our consultation submissions and through engaging with MHCLG officials and letters to the minister. At almost every meeting, event and roundtable, it has been resourcing, resourcing, resourcing.  

Our submission to the budget focused on three key monetary asks: funding the gap left by changes to the L7 apprenticeships; and providing strategic and local plan teams with adequate resources to ensure a plan led system is strengthened and maintained into the future.

So how has the planning system fared this year? And what does it all mean for the government’s ambitious programme of reforms? Well, the headline £48 million of additional funding and commitment to recruiting 1,400 planners by the end of the parliament is certainly not a tokenistic one, it is an unequivocal shift in the right direction. In extraordinarily difficult fiscal times such as now, this level of financial commitment to planning, is to be lauded.

Delving deeper into the 1,400 number, this is composed of the 300 planners already committed in the manifesto (and nearly delivered) over 800 graduate planners pledged in this Budget, and a further 200 experienced professionals to be recruited from existing programmes such as Public Practice’s work programme.

Is that job done and I can take some extended sabbatical? Not quite. Whilst the significant investment from government is welcomed, it falls short of what we anticipated the system needs, given the significant cuts we have identified since 2010 alongside the measured and anticipated workload increases, including managing the uncertainty of LGR and planning reforms. In terms of workforce, providing the 1400 additional planners by the end of parliament term doesn’t cover the estimated existing vacancies predicted in LPAs.

Any which way capacity building of the planning system won’t happen overnight and needs to be nurtured and maintained in the long-term. And that’s capacity across the piece, not just our intake of planners, but how we develop junior staff into senior and leadership roles and then retain them in the public sector. Especially given current issues identified in our research showing a lack of senior/principal planners and a potential mass retirement event in the near future. Many questions also remain about how can support our planning schools to deliver this pipeline, whom have been weathering existential macroeconomic threats alongside specific issues relating to changes to L7 apprenticeship.

As ever, more still needs unpacking from the Budget and more detail is needed on proposals before we can really evaluate if it truly moves the dial for our planning system. This includes further information on the proposed Planning Careers Hub and details on the Youth Guarantee and Growth and Skills Levy package.

So, I won’t book my trekking holiday to Patagonia just yet, and the Llamas will have to wait, but I’ll go to bed tonight knowing that my profession is moving towards a better place as the weeks, months and years unfold ahead.