Member

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, beautifully outlined the case for a chief planner. Planning has been through some really tough times. We have lost an awful lot of the resource that was there in days gone by, and we are now recognising the need to reinvent planning to make it a more prominent part of local government. That is not just about resource, although we are very grateful to the new Government for putting more resource into the planning system, both directly through grant aid and by supporting the level of fees that pays for the planners we need. In addition to the money and even the training, we need the status of all planning officers in local government to be elevated to a point where people see this as a career they wish to pursue and want to retain their post within local government, so that they are not tempted away by fees elsewhere or even discouraged from joining the whole system of planning, which has lost its status over recent years. The creation of a chief planner in every local authority—someone with status and public recognition—is part of the rehabilitation of planning as a central, vital part of local government.