Not-for-profit body will provide temporary workers to plug vacancies and save £2m
London councils are setting up a not-for-profit planning recruitment agency with the aim of saving £2m a year.

The Association of London Government plans to set up an agency for temporary staff to cover unfilled, full-time, planning positions.

At present, London councils use commercial agencies at a cost of £7m a year.

The ALG said two-thirds of London borough planning posts are classified as "hard to fill", pushing up costs and making planners more difficult to recruit than teachers.

Richard Bate of planning consultant Green Balance welcomed the plans. He said: "There is a shortage of planners and I'm delighted London boroughs are taking it seriously."

But Robin Tetlow, managing director of planning consultant Tetlow King, said the new agency would not solve the shortage of planners. He said: "It's good to save councils money and we would love to save money as a consultancy. It costs about three times as much to recruit through agents as through advertising. But this not-for-profit agency will still have a battle to get good people to register and will still be in competition to attract people [with commercial agencies]."

The news comes ahead of the launch, next month, of a Greater London Authority toolkit to help councils negotiate affordable housing deals with developers. The kit, developed by consultant Three Dragons, helps work out how many affordable homes a developer could afford to build on any given site.

A spokesman for the ALG said: "It gives planners an easier way of assessing the likely costs and revenues of a development and an additional negotiating tool with developers who say 'We've seen your affordable housing policy and we can't afford to do it' – the ability to say 'our figures disagree with that, it is appropriate for the site to carry x% of affordable housing'.

"It gives boroughs a better opportunity to secure affordable homes from private developments."

Michael Hill, business development director of developer Countryside, expressed doubts over the kit's usefulness. He said: "I haven't used it and I am struggling to envisage a toolkit that would cope with all the different variables when approaching planning agreements, but anything that helps local authorities to better understand development interests and our landowner partners is a good thing."

Source

Housing Today