It’s strange but the word planners is almost an anagram of Spartan.
I couldn’t help thinking about this when Rachel Reeves announced that she would put 300 new planners into local authorities.
With 317 LAs in England, that is just under one per council. One wag said there should be 300 per council to make any difference.
Classical history students among you will know that at the Battle of Thermopylae in 486BC, 300
Spartans held the hundreds of thousands of the legions of Xerses 1 at bay at the famous pass.
So where is this Shadow Secretary of State going to find these 300 brave warriors to join the ranks of local government to keep the greedy developers at bay?
There is a huge shortage of planners in both the public and private sectors. Milton Keynes has tackled the problem head-on and has founded its own academy but that’s not the answer.
We are not producing enough planners even now so how is Rachel going to ‘magic up’ 300 planners? She’s not saying.
Along with other promises by Kier Starmer about Georgian Houses and releasing land from the Green Belt, a wholesale review of the planning system, and 1.5 million houses in the first term in office. I’m exhausted.
It’s getting like a poker game with Kier saying to Gove: ‘I’ll see you 300,000 houses and raise you another 1.2 million’.
As for the 300 Spartans – or planners as they are now known – has anyone told the Department of Education that they should start get these lads into training?
Hopefully they won’t be subjected to the rigours of ancient Greece where the ‘well-built and sturdy’ children were allowed to live, while those deemed unhealthy or deformed were left at the foot of a mountain to die. That’s one solution.
Sorry I don’t believe any of the numbers from anyone.
The questions are: how, where, when and who’s going to pay.
As an old boss of mine used to say: ‘don’t bother me with details’. Indeed.
Have a good week.
Tom
by the Planning PR guru 