Enabling Participatory Planning: Planning Aid and Advocacy in Neoliberal Times 9781447341406

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GAVIN PARKER EMMA STREET

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

Planning aid and advocacy in neoliberal times

POLICY PRESS

RESEARCH

GAVIN PARKER EMMA STREET

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING Planning aid and advocacy in neoliberal times

POLICY PRESS

RESEARCH

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Policy Press North America office: University of Bristol Policy Press 1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press Bristol 1427 East 60th Street BS2 8BB Chicago, IL 60637, USA UK t: +1 773 702 7700 t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 f: +1 773 702 9756 [email protected] [email protected] www.policypress.co.uk www.press.uchicago.edu © Policy Press 2018 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN 978-1-4473-4139-0 ISBN 978-1-4473-4141-3 ISBN 978-1-4473-4142-0 ISBN 978-1-4473-4140-6

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The right of Gavin Parker and Emma Street to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Policy Press Front cover: image kindly supplied by Getty Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

Contents

Figures, tables and boxes

iv

About the authors

v

Preface

vi

Acknowledgements ix one

Introduction: engaging in planning

1

two

Neoliberal times and participation in planning

15

three

Advocacy planning: then and now

43

four

Advocacy and Planning Aid in England

61

five

Neo-advocacy and contemporary issues in progressive planning

81

six

Conclusion: embedding neo-advocacy in planning systems

97

References

109

Index

129

iii

Figures, tables and boxes

Figures 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

Schematic of neo-advocacy planning forms Planning Aid ‘stepping-in’ Invitation to consult on a draft local plan in England Arnstein’s (1969) ‘ladder of participation’ The Intelligent Voter’s Guide to Town and Country Planning New Citizen’s Guide to Town and Country Planning The Handy Guide to Planning

4 10 20 24 26 27 27

Timeline of key formal participation channels in UK planning Steps in the Planning Aid timeline How a neo-advocacy agency could facilitate engagement

22 63 86

Planning Aid and Neighbourhood Plan support Planning Aid in transition

72 74

Tables 2.1 4.1 5.1

Boxes 4.1 4.2

iv

About the authors

Gavin Parker is Professor of Planning Studies in the Department of Real Estate and Planning, University of Reading, UK. Gavin has written extensively on the topics of citizenship and participation in planning, including neighbourhood planning. For two years (2012–14) he directed Planning Aid England. Emma Street is Associate Professor in the Department of Real Estate and Planning, University of Reading, UK. Emma’s research focuses on urban governance, policy and planning, and architecture and urban design.

v

Preface

The political nature of planning, and its impact (both positive and negative) upon communities, is now widely acknowledged. In the 1960s, planning theorists and scholars proposed a role for planning professionals in advocating for communities, particularly those groups excluded from planning debates many of whom were disproportionately affected by planning outcomes. Yet engaging communities in a meaningful way in planning remains a challenge. The book brings together the literature on advocacy planning and presents a renewed call for government at local and national levels, and many other key actors involved in planning both in the UK and elsewhere, to ensure that future planning systems and institutional arrangements facilitate and resource what we term ‘neo-advocacy’ support. ‘Neo-advocacy’ formulations are those that are responsive towards, and resilient in their orientation to, the neoliberalised contexts within which planning operates today. We argue that the advocacy project remains necessary given the continuing under-representation of lower-income and other minority groups in planning around the globe. Indeed, in an era dominated by neoliberal policy and related institutional orientations, the need for effective challenge and strong alternatives to be prepared and voiced in planning seems to us axiomatic. Whereas claims to empowerment, inclusion and engagement in planning are widespread, we argue for a refocusing of the attention of policymakers and the planning profession towards how neo-advocacy functions can be delivered and sustained, as part of a post-collaborative shift in participation in planning among so-called ‘pluralistic’ societies.

vi

PREFACE

In building this argument, the book reviews the literature on advocacy planning and community engagement in planning more widely, and interweaves empirical evidence drawn from participants involved with an advocacy body, Planning Aid England, to reconsider its basis and effectiveness. The raison d’être of Planning Aid organisations, and the issues that they draw attention to, are, we argue, centrally important to the legitimacy and effectiveness of planning. So much so, that we suggest the Planning Aid role needs to be placed on a more secure footing; either through existing organisations or via another agency. While our focus is on the UK context, and Planning Aid’s remit and role in particular, our strong sense is that advocacy functions remain critically important in delivering more socially just planning globally. In our view, advocacy bodies that can facilitate engagement in planning matters, particularly for those excluded from other participatory channels, are needed more than ever. Powerful interest groups continue to dominate planning outcomes. This can be seen in the way that land, property and development processes have become part of a global investment system. Supported by neoliberal assumptions and technologies, pre-existing power asymmetries along the lines of class, ethnicity, income and gender become further embedded, meaning that the views and voices of communities are all too easily ignored, sidelined or omitted from policymaking, decisionmaking or individual development schemes. Organising and embedding advocacy arrangements will not be straightforward; they will disturb a number of vested interests in planning and development and can simply be dismissed as a ‘luxury’, or sidestepped in the way that meaningful engagement in planning has often been in the past. Despite such reservations about the likelihood of immediate uptake of our call, we contend that neoliberal policy, and governmental agendas such as localism and associated funding environments, are doing little to help those who are not adequately represented in deliberations and decisions over their own lived environments, regardless of claims to the contrary. It is these failings and our frustration at their embedded and persistent nature that has prompted us to revisit, refresh and, in effect, become advocates for, a renewed advocacy project.

vii

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Policy Press, in particular Emily Watt, Ruth Wallace and Jamie Askew, for allowing us the platform to expand on the need to properly address issues of engagement and inclusive community involvement in planning, and how this is unlikely to happen without stable resourcing. Our thanks to our families and colleagues for their support. We feel duty bound to thank all the past and present volunteers and staff of Planning Aid across the UK, who have tried to make a positive difference and indeed to the growing numbers of citizen-planners who want to help shape a more positive set of planned outcomes in the future. Finally, given the timing and underpinning premises of this book, we wish to dedicate the work to the victims of the Grenfell fire which occurred June 2017 in London. While that incident is not a product of poor ‘planning’ it appears unquestionable that more trust and an institutional orientation to take communities’ concerns and needs more seriously might have prevented it.

ix

ONE Introduction: engaging in planning

‘It is through disobedience that progress has been made.’ (Oscar Wilde, 1891: 8) A clear challenge lies before us in attempting to induce, maintain and use participatory experiences in planning in such a way that people are widely engaged, listened to and responded to by government. Thinking about planning in particular, this includes ensuring that local populations are involved in the development of a range of different options about what changes might take place in their communities. In reality, we know that communities are often presented with a form of planning that, although it may not be packaged as such, is substantively a fait accompli. Participation, where it occurs, might too often amount to little more than an empty ritual. Planning practitioners have a responsibility for communities both present and future, and have a tricky balance to strike in discerning and acting in the ‘public interest’ and delivering sustainable development. Local populations need to feel invested in, and informed of, the results or consequences of different trajectories of change – over which they may have varying degrees of control (and enthusiasm for), especially when measured against their own self-interest. There is

1

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

indisputably a need for better public education about planning and a more robust way of ensuring that the product of such education (and much more) is meaningfully incorporated into planning processes. Formulations of such activity could be varied and operate at a range of scales and through different modes. As intimated by Oscar Wilde above, spaces of/for intervention may be created through political activism locally, and this may require a range of (ant)agonistic tactics involving new combinations of actors and resources. As such the ways in which participation in planning can be effected varies greatly. It is in this vein that a growing number of voices have emerged, acknowledging that pressure from organised and informed groups, beyond teams of planning professionals, can help to reshape planning. These groups, if properly resourced and supported, have the potential to better inform and legitimise efforts to plan in the public interest. A long shadow stretches across past practice in this area. Robert Dahl argued in his seminal work on neo-pluralism that, ‘conflicting interests make political life necessary; but complementary interests make it possible’ (Dahl, 1982: 188). He developed an important critique of classical pluralism which centred on the creative tension that conflict and cooperation presents in the midst of strategic and local issues and public and private interest. He highlighted the asymmetries of power and access that exist across plural societies and argued for a neopluralist analysis of society that accounted for difficulties of access and meaningful engagement. One outcome of Dahl’s call was to strengthen forms of progressive intervention; expressions of such thinking were apparent in the rise of advocacy planning seen from the 1960s onwards. The topic and practice of advocacy planning is one that has received limited attention in recent years, but given the current political and economic environment in which planning operates, we argue that it is in need of further exposure and contemporary discussion. Indeed, the early advocacy movement was itself a reflection of the neo-pluralism expounded by Dahl. It is true to say that while related debates over participation and activism in planning have continued to be rehearsed over the generations, questions of how to render planning more inclusive have remained unresolved. This includes an ongoing

2

INTRODUCTION

concern about how to ensure that marginalised interests are keyed into decision-making (Davoudi and Bell, 2016). Frustration with formal participation channels, accompanied by critiques of advocacy, have acted to encourage activist planning forms and agonistic challenge as part of the mainstay of recent debate over how to ‘open-up’ planning. Our task here is to try and bring these strands together and, as such, may be categorised as part of a broader post-collaborative agenda for participation in planning. Activist forms of planning clearly take on different formulations and tilt at different objectives – and not only antithetically to the ‘challenges of neoliberalism’. Activist episodes may be judged to occur whereby ‘insider’ or institutionalised, intermediate and outsider positions are established and used to challenge power (Sager, 2016: 1262). Here we explore and hold up for scrutiny how ‘intermediate’ planning, where actors are involved in supporting and advising communities, has fared and may be developed further. This is examined through the lens of Planning Aid. Our account takes up earlier calls issued by notable academicians such as John Forester and John Friedmann to not only identify issues of politics and power in planning, but to discuss and inform initiatives aiming to actually address such obstacles progressively. We argue in this vein that the ideas underpinning advocacy planning formulated in the 1960s (and since) require a retreatment and reassessment in the context of a neoliberal policy environment. As a result, our focus is on how to develop a more hybrid and sustainable form of neo-advocacy, which is also mindful of past responses from the planning profession seen since the early 1970s. Figure 1.1 presents a simplified illustration of how the various roles and parts of an overall ‘neo-advocacy offer’ cut across normative ideas of the insider/outsider. Our reformulation of advocacy planning plays to an intermediate role that involves a combination of previously labelled ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ forms. It sits both within formal preexisting channels of engagement, lending it institutional legitimacy, and outside of the system, leaving the possibility of exacting pressure and causing policy ‘disruption’ via activism, protest or other lobbying forms on the ‘system’, as needed. The types of specific tasks involved

3

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

in a neo-advocacy project could include: helping to deconstruct development proposals; unpicking and developing questions around development viability assumptions; facilitating planning meetings; checking, challenging and responding to evidence; preparing surveys or other means of generating understandings of wider community need or preferences; assisting in writing counter-proposals; developing skills in research and presentation; ensuring that planning law and policy updates are conveyed and explained as appropriate; and representing community views at formal planning meetings. We discuss these possible ensembles of activity further in Chapter Five. Figure 1.1: Schematic of neo-advocacy planning forms

Objection to planning application Neighbourhood Plan

Lobbying Consultation responses

Neo-advocacy scope

Institutionalised engagement Freedom of information request Legal challenge

Protest Alternative plans Education

For us, the need for advocacy in, and education about, planning, remains an urgent project. This is because the need for support and education about planning and its impacts (both positive and negative) in the wider community, and most notably in disadvantaged

4

INTRODUCTION

groups, remains great. Our observation of planning in England (and it is applicable in degrees elsewhere) is that the forces aligned to organise and promote unsustainable development remain powerful. Perhaps more critically, the basis of this power, and its impact on communities, is rarely challenged or held to account. This can be seen as a consequence of the dominance of neoliberal growth machines, characterised by new assemblages of public and privatesector experts. These reflect and reproduce a type of development politics in which there is a greater emphasis on a politics of delivery that marginalises democratic engagement (Raco et al, 2016). These pro-development arrangements have come to dominate policy and the practice of planning and development in the UK and elsewhere. As a consequence, planning and the role of the professional planner has been recast as an activity that is primarily about smoothing the path for the market to deliver. This instrumentalisation of planning has featured the use of private advocacy in the form of consultants who press down on government, including the attrition of policy goals such as the provision of affordable housing, to maximise private developer advantage (see Crosby and Wyatt, 2016; Raco et al, 2016; Friedmann, 1987). This operating environment alone justifies a new treatment of the advocacy topic; it also presents a challenge for policymakers and practitioners (as well as academics), to (re)focus on how people are represented, how they mobilise and how their interests are taken into account in planning (and contemporary modes of governance more widely). The call embedded here is made more pertinent in the context of forms of localism, ongoing waves of privatisation and commercialisation in planning, and by the chronic inequalities surrounding access to housing. The scale of the ‘problem’ means that existing approaches taken towards ‘community planning’ or related participation avenues can seem rather limited, tokenistic or both. Channels of participation are also often bounded for reasons of resource or skills, let alone for those of political convenience. This problematic has been present throughout the lifespan of modern planning. As Cockburn (1977) argued, the ‘dangers of state participation’, in terms of the opportunity

5

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

and ability to manipulate and sidestep contrary arguments, should be recognised and new spaces for challenge created. Thus the current situation features both the state and private interests who are capable of, and have been active in, ‘tokenising’ participation in planning in various ways. There are widely varying degrees of knowledge about planning issues and formal processes among lay populations, but, overall, levels are low. As populations become more diverse, levels of engagement tend to dip. Moreover, skills relevant to engaging and intervening in planning are not distributed equitably in society. These gaps have long been recognised and thus the idea of targeting and focusing support is not new. We know that, across western societies, levels of apathy towards politics is growing, resulting in a general shift towards disengagement. Finally, and not unrelatedly, neoliberal growth machines gain in power, while the state’s intervention in critical areas of public interest such as the provision of affordable housing, weakens. The combined effect is that the stakes are heightened and unevenness in the levels of understanding about how planning affects lives is perpetuated. Given these challenges, we recognise that the case for neo-advocacy is not straightforward in implementation, even if it may appear quite compelling. The term is deployed here to express an assembly of tools, techniques and interventions enabled through a team of skilled people. These people act to variously educate, translate, upskill and only then, if necessary, represent others in (and around) the planning system in what, as we explain, could be something of a last resort. Thus, neoadvocacy is not in reality one thing. Indeed, our central argument is that without advocacy institutions, as well as a coherent (if varied) set of tools and modes active in planning, effective engagement will remain unrealistic for many. A shift towards a style of planning that requires technical specialist knowledge, and the attendant exclusions and resource imbalances which these bring, is an important part of the picture here. Expecting lay people to get to grips with planning issues on their own in the context of a highly complex and politicised system is not credible. Indeed, while there are examples of community groups that have ‘challenged the system’, they are few and far between

6

INTRODUCTION

and often tell a story of tenacity and of wider (sometimes professional) networks of support. A lack of sources of support hampers progress towards an agenda that is based upon a wider ownership of social needs, environmental sustainability goals and economic resilience. The challenges that the planning system is called upon to mediate are mounting. Similarly, the task of creating a more inclusive planning is growing as the barriers to effecting new co-managed forms increase, despite claims to the contrary by successive governments. Efforts to challenge the status quo are apparent in fragmented examples of activism and protest, and via agonistic challenge. Low-level but seemingly widespread disaffection and disengagement is apparent both between local populations and public authorities; antipathy also reveals itself in instances of frustrated conflict between communities and developers. In what follows, we explain that episodic efforts to engage, including those that seek to challenge and counter, need to be supported and informed. Moreover, we argue that spaces for deliberation and co-production need extension and adequate resourcing if they are to form a recognised and established element of a post-collaborative planning. We build up to this argument via a review that cuts across planning theory and practice. The review focuses on forms of advocacy planning and associated labels such as ‘equity planning’ and ‘activist planning’. We also reflect upon the past efforts of Planning Aid as one of the main advocacy efforts in England (and Scotland and Wales) over the last 50 or so years. Planning Aid remains the main institutionalised response to addressing shortfalls in knowledge and power in planning in the UK but has been historically under-supported. The anticipated remit for ‘planning aid’ was clearly set out in an article written by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) president in 1972: ‘[unless] communities [which] lack resources, knowledge and, political power…are given assistance, the effect of planning decisions can be highly regressive’ (Jim Amos, 1972, cited in Fagence, 1977: 315). However, despite recognition within the profession that assistance in engaging communities was required, our review of Planning Aid’s work highlights how difficult it has been to widen participation

7

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

and effectively advocate for those who find it challenging to engage without support. Our research and experience of Planning Aid also highlights how, in the context of austerity and other policy shifts relevant to the practice of planning, the need for support in the most disadvantaged communities remains acute. We use the term ‘neo-advocacy’ quite deliberately to convey how advocacy as conceived and undertaken in its early iterations may not be suited or appropriate to the contemporary context wholesale, but that the underpinning issues and prompts remain. As such, we perceive that there is a pressing need for effective scrutiny, challenge and inclusive engagement in planning as represented by the neo-advocacy label.

Post-Second World War planning The era of modern town planning immediately after the Second World War was based on rational comprehensive planning models, coupled with a premise of the ‘public interest’ being served by planned outcomes in the built and natural environment. This was evident on both sides of the Atlantic and indeed across many other territories (Klosterman, 1985; Tait, 2016). In the UK, the underlying belief was that development would enable the growth of the economy, improve social conditions and maintain the environment for the benefit of the population as a whole. Such general aspirations, and those of the planning profession by association, were quickly tarnished by public responses to the resulting outcomes which were, in the main, received unenthusiastically. Post-war planning lacked effective mobilisation of support and typically involved little or no engagement with the population. Not unrelatedly, the resulting built forms were often regarded as being without character and militated against positive socio-spatial relations. It was only after two decades of large-scale reconstruction that the way in which decisions were being taken, and their basis, became subject to closer scrutiny in the UK. The work of authors such as Davies (1972) highlighted how professional planners were driving through projects and plans without much reference to

8

INTRODUCTION

communities or without an otherwise convincing basis for action. Outcomes may have been claimed as progressive – in Davies’ terms ‘evangelistic’ – but while such motives may have existed in some town halls, the predominant driver of urban development was an instrumental and utilitarian notion of the ‘public interest’; latterly combined with private interest and associated profit motives. Critical reflections on the post-war period have shown how efforts to plan were hampered by resource politics, as well as by interest-based tensions. This in essence meant that many plans and developments were either starved of the necessary resources to be implemented properly or that the decisions made were in some way affected by backstage power plays (Goffman, 1959). This has been described effectively by authors such as Flyvbjerg (1998) and amplified by others including Hillier (2000) in their analyses of the planning environment. Indeed Rydin (2007) recognised that the basis of planners’ power is their ability to command expert knowledge. However, this power is contingent in that it must, to some degree, be socially and politically acceptable (Turner, 2014). This viewpoint also implies that planning ‘knowledge’ can be co-constructed by communities and professional planners. This is itself a fruitful area of debate which begins to reveal the socially constructed, contingent and partial nature of claims to authoritative knowledge, as routinely deployed in planning. Parallel questions about the means, ends and the basis of twentieth century rational interventionism were posed in the United States during the 1960s. Critiques revealed how planning systems appeared bereft of a wider legitimacy in a society that was becoming more pluralised. The writings of commentators such as Jane Jacobs (and thence a whole group of authors and activists) recognised that new and alternative models of planning and engagement would be needed; both as a result of past failures but also in the light of the increasing diversity and fluidity of modern societies. Part of this movement became associated with the advocacy planning approach whereby planners were urged to act on behalf of those marginalised by modern planning processes and outcomes. This was seen as a necessary measure that involved advocates ‘stepping-in’ and contesting issues on behalf

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ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

of community-based interests. The imperative here was to give voice when recognising the immediacy and complexity of many planning conflicts. This reactive dimension was captured in a commemorative cartoon celebrating 40 years of Planning Aid in 2013 (see Figure 1.2). Figure 1.2: Planning Aid ‘stepping-in’

Reproduced by permission of Rob Cowan. Created to recognise the 40th anniversary of Planning Aid in 2013.

The early proponents of advocacy planning appeared at a time when civil rights agendas were being pursued and the appetite to seek fairer and more inclusive systems of governance was strong. Such movements were promoted and supported by thinkers such as Saul Alinsky with his Rules for Radicals (1971) and Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) which helped give impetus to wider community organising and development activity (see also Taylor, 2011; Craig and Mayo, 1995; Montgomery and Thornley, 1990). The advocacy planning model was seen as a way to address asymmetries of power in planning practices whereby some groups in society were not able to voice their needs, views or preferences. This was to be effected using direct participation and, critically, the involvement of professional planners to amplify citizens’ viewpoints and to seek out and present alternatives.

10

INTRODUCTION

The essence of this response to urban change was a concern to ensure that local communities would benefit from new development and that the plurality of society would be reflected more widely in policy development and decision-making. An implicit goal was that of a more pluralistic form of democracy which recognised that multiple centres of power existed, sought to ensure that more voices were represented and, in turn, aimed to engender more inclusive forms of planning. This presented a series of challenges to the planning profession and to existing political systems, including established practices of local representation. The rallying call was for planners at that time to act as change agents by speaking for specific interests which needed articulation: effectively, to become the advocates for groups marginalised from planning processes. Leaders of this form of progressive planning practice included Paul Davidoff (1965), whose work highlighted how planning processes and outcomes were particular manifestations of power and influence in society. He argued that the plans being produced in the post-Second World War period in the US could not be said to represent the views or preferences of those affected by them. This agonistic orientation gained significant traction and, by the early 1970s, many examples of action groups and protests assisted by activist planners had emerged. Essentially the early voices who proclaimed the need for advocacy in planning were asking practitioners and theorists to openly acknowledge the political nature of the planning environment. As a result, the profession needed to act progressively to facilitate greater citizen participation through capacity building, as well as by providing a voice on behalf of the grassroots. The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) in the UK had, by the early 1960s, already adopted a somewhat more diffuse aim of supporting public education for the ‘art and science of town planning’. This was logical, if conservative, given that education was an element of the articles of association incorporated in the Institute’s Royal Charter granted in 1959. This general educative role was seen as necessary given the rather negative public perception of planning and planners. Public confidence in planning in the UK had been seriously affected by post-

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ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

Second World War reconstruction and rather heavy-handed approaches to slum clearance, the creation of new public housing estates, delivery of infrastructure schemes and new settlement planning (such as the New Towns and Enhanced Towns programmes) – as well as scandals involving corruption (see Gardiner, 1985). What might be called the public education mandate, and the subsequent vehicle – Planning Aid – was supported more widely by those within the planning profession and a new emphasis was placed on giving voice to those groups who were otherwise largely excluded from formal planning processes. As we go on to explain, Planning Aid became a feature of the British planning landscape and, by the 1980s, its activities had been adopted and loosely institutionalised as an operational part of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). The institutionalisation of Planning Aid was not the only possible outcome of the recognised need for better public education in planning. But its emergence did seem like a logical and timely response to several discernible strands of debate and discussion. First, there was recognition of the role and impact of planning on society in general terms and the challenges posed by educational gaps in planning knowledge among the general public. Second, there was debate about what the means of delivering any educational role would be. Third, who to engage in such a project and last, how and where the more conflictual or controversial cases and needs of marginalised groups could be dealt with. There is an additional aspect here that is rarely rehearsed. This relates to the possible conflicts of interest in a professional body acting to equip and inform non-professionals – when this activity could serve to undermine the status of that profession (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2014) and actively promote challenge from outwith. As discussed later, this point is important as it relates to the (in)ability of individual private- or public-sector organisations in isolation to fund Planning Aid (or a similar neo-advocacy facilitator in the future). It also relates to individuals working elsewhere in planning (that is, for a local authority or private consultant) volunteering their time and experience for a body that might seek to challenge internalised practices.

12

INTRODUCTION

Planning Aid has, in its various formulations across the UK, provided hands-on support to deal with planning issues since the 1970s. Planning Aid staff and volunteers have offered practical help such as advice on how to contest a planning application, and other services informed by an enabling participatory ethos. In recent years, the future for many non-profit organisations has been uncertain and many, including Planning Aid, have experienced severe budget cuts (Clayton et al, 2016). One impact of cutbacks has been to marginalise their role in the face of an increasingly neoliberalised planning system and political environment. In the UK context, this has had a particularly ironic ring to it given governmental claims to engender a more co-produced and inclusive form of planning via mechanisms such as the Localism Act (2011). As part of these reflections, we consider how advocacy planning has been limited in its success, but argue that, despite its shortcomings, a new impetus and reformulation is needed. In the following chapters we provide an account of how participation in planning via Planning Aid and advocacy has fared in both the past and the present. This cannot hope to be exhaustive and we acknowledge that much of our account is based around ‘institutionalised’ advocacy forms – particularly in England through the case of Planning Aid – as opposed to other, less formalised typologies. In our review we consider how Planning Aid England (PAE) has fared operating in an intermediating role (see Sager, 2016), before outlining how we see a form of neo-advocacy planning, embracing the ideas of social learning, activism and similar (if refined) intermediary support, faring in the future. In Chapters Two and Three we consider how institutional responses to calls to open up and democratise planning have been received. We show how these often involve challenging dominant interests and opening-up alternative forms of planning. We chart the experience of Planning Aid in Chapter Four, as a key agent involved in the delivery of a progressive participatory planning agenda since 1973, and examine in some detail how Planning Aid has eked out an existence since the 1970s as a somewhat marginal if laudable operation, facing pressure from all sides to adopt different roles and orientations. Like other third sector

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ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

bodies, Planning Aid in England has had to scale back its activities and realign its operational ethos and goals in recent times and as such we bring the account of Planning Aid England up to date. As such the chapter includes an assessment of its situation over the past decade or so based on empirical research with Planning Aid staff, volunteers and clients, and our direct experience of the organisation, before considering how PAE’s position could be sustained in the current climate. Chapter Five expands on how a neo-advocacy approach can be justified and designed, and gives a more detailed explanation of what might be involved. Finally, in Chapter Six we conclude by reflecting on how we feel such services should be operationalised to enable neo-advocacy planning in the future. Overall our position is not one that calls for Planning Aid to necessarily be the basis for a new institutional settlement (although we do deem some kind of institution necessary). Rather, it seems to us that the established model that Planning Aid past and present has operated, and the experience that has been accrued through this, is something to be evaluated, built upon and developed rather than rejected outright, despite shortfalls or difficulties in the past. In this spirit, we hope that the extended list of references provided at the end of the book will be of use to others wishing to explore and research this area of planning and politics.

14

TWO Neoliberal times and participation in planning

Engaging the public in planning processes carries a dominant narrative that the development of understanding among interests and the garnering of knowledge from communities about their needs and preferences is a positive good. It is common therefore to hear exhortations about engineering supportive institutional arrangements and sensibilities in planning systems and how these are a necessary element for a legitimate planning. Thus, while arguments over the general principle of participation have largely been settled, what remains are a range of questions over how to effect public participation, on what basis and what to do about the competing knowledge claims and futures generated by wider engagement in planning, that is, questions of resolution. As such this topic area, which may be characterised as part of the empowerment agenda, has generated a huge amount of interest given that it strikes at the core of not only planning processes but of who determines the substantive goals of planning. A rich vein of research and analysis from the academy and agendas from numerous governments has spanned the period from the early 1970s until the present. Across that period key motifs of techniques, degrees of empowerment and collaboration, the role of the professional

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ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

planner and how to respond to a more fragmented and fluid society, feature prominently. The more radical or systemic responses to the empowerment agenda are borne out of a long-running search for ways to ‘emancipate communities’ (MacDonald, 2014; Matthews, 2013) and ensure that planning becomes a more inclusive process. Some efforts have claimed to redress issues of exclusion and widen access to planning while other mainstream forms and changes have been little more than tokenistic in their execution, with consultation and shallow engagement acting as much to justify professional plans and individual schemes as to actually shape them. Clearly one of the defining features of a legitimate town planning in the twenty-first century involves a process whereby consideration of different interests and competing arguments about the future are aired and decided. This, it is assumed, should be based on robust and diverse evidence and couched in terms of realistic, deliverable policy. This simplistic description of planning and engagement of course belies a complex and open task; one that is made ever more challenging in a diverse and changing social, technological and economic environment. As such, both the issues and the means involved in planning practice shift, and the pursuit of planning progress becomes as much of an art as a science. Experience has reinforced the idea that planning processes and outcomes become approximations that are produced and acted out in imperfect conditions and decisions made by those in power may not bear rational scrutiny. Planning efforts will inevitably therefore be prone to deficits, oversights and in some cases deliberate manipulation. Previous research in the UK has indicated that the rules operated in planning systems will favour some groups over others (Healey et al, 1988). This assessment has been a consistent justification for advocacy across the world since the 1960s. In our view, Healey is right to point towards the effects of structuring dynamics in planning whereby: ‘interaction is manifest through the way broader forces are constituted in the world of actors, through the making and acknowledging of formal rules, through the deployment

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NEOLIBERAL TIMES AND PARTICIPATION IN PLANNING

of material resources… and through the frames of reference actors deploy’ (Healey, 1999: 113). This brings into view the question of political expediencies and how the planning system can present politicians with opportunities to make or preserve political capital, regardless of the impact on segments of local populations. Flyvbjerg’s (1998) study of the planning process in Aalborg appeared to confirm how ‘those interested parties who hold economic and institutional power are always likely to lead development in a certain direction regardless of public opinion’ (Flyvbjerg, 1998: 321). The opacity and changeability of structuring conditions can act to distance decisions from communities – and the outcomes may not appear to make sense or be justifiable to any others bar those politicians themselves. This type of scenario indicates a continuing need to at least maintain open and clear communications about planning decisions, conditions and processes. Attempts to reshape planning so that a more open and accountable practice is possible have been widely reported. However localised experience has caused significant disillusionment with formal processes of engagement typically offered up by local authorities and other public bodies. The reform of existing formal channels of participation has rested largely on questions of legitimacy and accountability with the ‘solution’ being to offer formal spaces for participation to take place ‘inside’ the system. However, these can then be used selectively to ‘manage’ popular opinion. Concerns over the tokenism of participation have also motivated a parallel debate over ‘outsider’ pressure. Here the view is that political pressure applied by social movements can provide a legitimate means to call planning decision-makers and developers to account. Such insurgent ‘outsider’ activity includes forms of policy disruption (see McCann, 2001), protest, campaigning and enrolling media pressure, and is increasingly seen as an important part of post-modern planning (see Holston, 1998; Beard, 2012). Challenges to mainstream praxis have, however, been viewed as delusionary by some commentators, given their fragmented nature and unreliability in achieving reform. This calls into view Žižek’s

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(1999) analysis of how political activism is often ‘particularised’: set at a distance from legitimate institutionalised processes which stymies the (political) transformative potential of insurgency. For example, in reflecting on UK government attempts to justify wide-ranging cutbacks under the banner of austerity localism it is discernible that ‘distancing’ tactics have been manifest both in attempts to isolate alternatives as ‘impossible’ but also in presenting (new) spaces for engagement without ‘resource, commitment or political will to fully realise the potential in the rhetoric’ (Clayton et al, 2016: 724). As a result, ‘forms of disconnect between those in power and those who feel on the receiving end of damaging decisions’ (Clayton et al, 2016: 737) are visible and continuing (see also Taylor, 2011). It is notable that the critical literature discusses and dissects institutionalised and collaborative forms of planning, and regards these as susceptible to manipulation or co-option by powerful interests. Such analyses have in part prompted and sustained post-political accounts of planning (see Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012; 2014) and given further credence to the accusations of post-democratic manipulation of interests in planning (MacLeod, 2011; Parker and Street, 2015a; Tomaney, 2016). This assessment identifies a suite of technologies that are designed to evacuate alternative realities with the consequence that resultant formulations of participation: ‘displace politics through the projection of a world without conflict where a consensus order is already established or where it can be established through various strategies such as deliberative democracy’ (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2014: 31). Such forms may be accompanied by a range of incentives and other inducements financial or otherwise, furthering their reach and power (Matthews et al, 2015). The argument runs that much participation offered since the 1970s has been largely placatory whether ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’, formal or organic. While this view is a generalised one it does indicate how marginalised groups, let alone others with more wherewithal, may struggle to make an impact on planning without significant help.

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Participation in planning and drivers of urban change in review A central motive driving participation agendas in planning has been how to ‘open up’ planning and work towards a more inclusive process; in effect, to operate a system that better reflects the needs and preferences of a wide range of interests. The drive to ensure more pluralistic planning processes (and set of outcomes) has subsequently been folded into the meta-narrative of sustainable development where questions of equity, futurity and participation have joined concerns with protecting the environment and shaping development (for example, see Doak and Parker, 2018). This shift towards sustainability as the prime substantive concern for planning has acted to conceal as much as reveal. Scholars have recognised how such a broad and rather nebulous motivating concept can be used to excuse almost any development and to render ‘impossible’ many others (Gunder, 2010; Swyngedouw, 2010). This more cynical view is one that has propelled the post-political critique of planning, where it follows that governments locally and nationally have never truly had the aim of democratising planning in mind and that mechanisms purportedly designed to engage and empower have, in reality, been more about circumscribing and containing. This chimes with earlier pessimism over the resilience of public interest to co-option by the powerful (see Checkoway, 1994). Instead, fearful of possible costs of the loss of power and of the reaction of other client interests such as developers and their investors, they have pirouetted through the challenge of ‘opening up’ planning. They have done just enough to claim legitimacy and have said just enough to maintain the illusion of a participatory planning within a rhetoric of sustainable development. As a result, securing effective participation has been largely elided by local government and politicians and echoes the assessments made by Fagence (1977) about the limited effort to enable public engagement in the UK. Rydin (1999) commented that the provisions made since the 1970s have led to most local authorities adopting a ‘decide, announce, and defend’ strategy towards its decisions and reflected a generally dim outlook regarding public participation.

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The main public input to local planning in England is in relation to statutory consultation opportunities (see Figure 2.1) for development plans and rights to object or comment on planning applications. Latterly, the advent of neighbourhood planning in England (Parker and Salter, 2017), and Community Planning in Scotland (Pemberton et al, 2015), has raised some hopes for a more substantive shift (see below and Chapter Four) but as Vigar et al (2012) note, such activities are as susceptible as any other to manipulation. Figure 2.1: Invitation to consult on a draft local plan in England

Source: Reproduced by permission of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

In this situation the mainstay of pressure from academic researchers since the 1980s has been to urge that a more genuinely deliberative model is embraced (for example, Healey, 2003). This reflects a rather more optimistic branch of the literature on planning and participation. Debates have spawned theoretical (and more practice-orientated) ideas to help justify or inform participation based on collaboration and consensus-building – as well as precipitating critique (for

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example, Carpenter and Brownill, 2008; Harris, 2002; Huxley, 2000; Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 1998). As such we turn now to account for the ways in which ideas about participation have been put into practice in the UK. The discussion since the late 1960s has rested on how to generate participation, when to ‘allow’ participation, on what terms and to what end. This underlines how powerful actors have resisted more open and inclusive planning while governments have attempted to at least provide some semblance of participation by affording formal opportunities for comment and for objection to governmental planning policy and on individual development proposals. A familiar starting point for planning scholars assessing participation in the UK is the Skeffington report of 1969. The Skeffington Committee was commissioned in 1968 to conduct a comprehensive review of the public’s role in development plans. Their report achieved only limited reforms to the British planning system (as introduced in 1947) but it did go some way towards establishing the principle of participation within planning practice (Skeffington Committee, 1969). The outcomes of Skeffington, and perhaps more significantly the discussions it engendered, sat alongside parallel debates which were more widely orientated towards systems of democracy in the UK. Two such examples are the Seebohm review of social services (1968), and the local government reorganisation instigated in the early 1970s following the Redcliff-Maud report (1969). Both of these reviews considered questions of how to ensure a viable local democratic system. Thus 1968–69 is often cited as a key moment when the UK government conceded that planning had to feature formal input from the general public and that it needed to be more democratically accountable. The 1968 Planning Act made it necessary for plans and development decisions in the UK to feature at least some element of participative democracy. This was to supplement the traditional representative forms where decisions were informed primarily by professional planners. Other suggestions for reform made in Skeffington were left unimplemented, including a recommendation that community development officers be appointed to organise and enable involvement

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and that community forums be established (Fagence, 1977). Thus, ideas about mobilising participation and informing people, rather than simply offering up consultation opportunities or a channel for objections, had even then been regarded as desirable but were not taken up (see Table 2.1). Table 2.1: Timeline of key formal participation channels in UK planning Date

Legislation/Policy

Main change or provision

1947

Town and Country Planning Act

No provision for public engagement; discretionary exhibitions advised

1962

Town and Country Planning Act

Written representations on planning matters allowed; objections to submitted plans allowed

1968

Planning Act (and 1969 Act in Scotland)

Consultation in local plan-making process, right to object to planning applications included

1990

Town and Country Planning Act

Planning applications that provoke objections must be considered by full committee

2004

Planning and compulsory Purchase Act

Front-loading of engagement in plan formulation

2011

Localism Act (England)

Statutory neighbourhood planning

This missed opportunity left the UK with a more limited participatory offer than could have been achieved in the late-1960s and 1970s. The compromises that were struck followed on from expressions of widespread dissatisfaction with numerous schemes and trajectories of change led by the state, as well as wider discussions about how ‘the professions’ acted to obscure rather than enlighten the populace. Planners were aware of their poor public image as early as 1957, as indicated by the following lament: ‘John Citizen hates and distrusts planners and we have about as good a press as burglars’ (Littlewood, 1957 cited in Fagence, 1977: 260). Echoes of this sentiment and the disillusionment with ‘experts’ has once again been resonating in the UK (see McElvoy, 2016) leading to further calls to open up planning to lay contributions. Such agendas have fed into UK government thinking, with aspirations to develop a more ‘open source’ form of planning featuring prominently (see Conservative Party, 2010).

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While there are many examples of ideas and tools in circulation geared towards enabling participation (for example, Brownill and Parker, 2010; Pemberton et al, 2015; Baker et al, 2007), there are numerous critiques of the initiatives that have been aimed at extending participation (for example, Eversole, 2012; Sager, 2011; Miraftab, 2009; Krumholz, 1994). Despite numerous legislative iterations relating to how, when and if local government should consult, or otherwise seek the views of the public, it is arguable whether over the subsequent decades effective, institutionalised engagement has been pursued substantively (Doak and Parker, 2005). If it has, it has been at the behest of individual authorities and resulted in sporadic and reactive efforts to work in partnership with communities. These have tended to feature as part of specific regeneration projects, ‘renewal’ programmes, or via slightly more diffuse channels such as contributions to Community Strategies in the UK, the latter of which produced mostly generic documents that had little effect in steering change or giving voice to community interests (Raco et al, 2006; Geddes, 2006). Perhaps the most well-known schema highlighting how different forms of ‘participation’ reflect degrees of empowerment and influence was that set out by Arnstein (1969). This indicated how those who stepped inside the system could be co-opted or used by those controlling the process in order to claim legitimacy, noting the ‘empty ritual’ of some participation (Arnstein, 1969: 216) as well as indicating how different participatory behaviours could be measured in terms of the degree of ‘citizen power’ afforded. At the lower ‘rungs’ of this ladder were the dark arts of ‘manipulation’, while the heaven-ward rungs rather lionise citizen control (Figure 2.2). Such frameworks were at one level rather reactionary, and yet they reflected the concern that many participation opportunities did indeed fall quite far down the ladder – even if they professed otherwise. Participatory spaces are often diluted or co-opted to serve the interests of the powerful, or designed to minimise perceived ‘obstruction’ to development, and typically involve consultation exercises, and superficial adjustments to policy which can amount to a ‘new tyranny’

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(Cleaver et al, 2001) or reflect a ‘symbolic inclusion’ (Porter and Craig, 2004; Sager, 2011). This state of affairs has also presaged theory and approaches towards planning that envisaged people either ‘taking over’ the process from the Figure 2.2: Arnstein’s (1969) ‘ladder of participation’

8

Citizen Control

7

Delegation

6

Partnership

5

Placation

4

Consultation

3

Informing

2

Therapy

1

Manipulation

} } }

Source: Arnstein, 1969: 217.

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Citizen Control

Tokenism

Nonparticipation

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state or acting to challenge and creatively disrupt orthodox thinking. This had a profound influence on those critical of early responses postSkeffington and the tokenistic way in which pre-prepared plans were ‘consulted upon’. It also connects to critiques of methods and channels lacking credibility in terms of how inputs are treated or alternatives considered (Innes and Booher, 2004; Doak and Parker, 2005). What all of these critiques were lacking was a robust theoretical approach towards either how to change the system or challenge it sufficiently such that ‘extra-system’ views and alternatives would be heard and actually exert influence, rather than being co-opted or dismissed as marginal or poorly evidenced. Critical voices outside of the planning profession have agitated for a richer approach to opening-up planning and have sought to instigate change. This corresponds most directly with the outsider/intermediary model that Sager (2016) recently identified (and is discussed below), whereby planners and citizen-planners deliberately operate in tension with the system, preferring to place pressure visibly on developers and local authorities by operating from the ‘outside’. The role of those acting to mediate between interests has been relatively underresearched in the past few decades. Yet these actors are clearly important when gaps in power, knowledge and skills in mediation are so obviously central to enabling engagement. The role of intermediaries in planning refers then to individuals and related institutional arrangements that see actors with particular skills, knowledges and aptitudes working alongside communities to ensure that those communities understand how the system works, know how to present their own interests and how to develop the capacity for ongoing activity. Returning to the post-war narrative, by the 1960s there was growing evidence of how many planning decisions and policies were affected by politics and the influence of the powerful, often to the neglect or detriment of others. This became untenable as sections of the public recoiled from the models and outcomes of reconstruction post-Second World War and political support for comprehensive planning wavered. Such experiences prompted numerous other outputs including pamphlets such as the Intelligent Voter’s Guide to Town and

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Country Planning produced in 1964 by the Town and Country Planning Association (Figure 2.3). Figure 2.3: The Intelligent Voter’s Guide to Town and Country Planning

Source: TCPA (1964) Reproduced by permission of the TCPA.

Such educative pamphlets were well intentioned but were never likely to mobilise wide engagement or reach marginalised communities on their own. While the production of such accessible guides to planning has continued (see Figures 2.4 and 2.5) there is a widespread acknowledgement that these serve a rather limited information function. Over 50 years ago advocacy planning was conceived as a means to represent and support sections of the population who were less able to participate effectively and to provide a means of organised challenge to the system. While the consideration of advocacy planning in practice is afforded its own space in Chapter Three, it is useful to explain here that advocacy did not primarily involve active collaboration of interests in the forms conceived in subsequent decades. Its main identifying feature was of challenge and the representation of interests poorly served

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Figure 2.4: New Citizen’s Guide to Town and Country Planning

Source: TCPA (1974) Reproduced by permission of the TCPA.

Figure 2.5: The Handy Guide to Planning

Source: RTPI/PAE/Urban Forum (2012) Reproduced by permission of the RTPI.

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by dominant mechanisms for decision-making in planning. In England, one response to help implement the ideas of the early advocacy planning proponents in the US (for example, Davidoff, 1965) was the creation of Planning Aid (see Chapter Four). It had already been recognised that wider legal support for those without means should in principle be offered. Indeed, the concept of legal aid was conceived in Victorian England, with the recognition that access to the law was highly uneven stretching back further still. Pro bono legal aid was initially offered on charitable terms prior to the outbreak of the First World War. However, it was from 1949 that Legal Aid was offered as part of a state funded package in the UK (Hynes, 2010). Planning Aid borrows both its name and an important founding principle from Legal Aid. The theoretical basis for legal aid stresses the critical role that such support plays in developing social citizenship and enabling people to live and engage according to the ‘standards of the prevailing society’ (Sommerlad, 2004: 354). The symmetry with Planning Aid’s key aims is clear although the context and decision environment is different (Marris, 1994).

Participation in theory Collaborative planning theory has held significant influence over thinking about participation in planning for the last 20 years or so. First, we consider its prompts and the critique levelled against it, before turning to an explanation of advocacy planning forms as a precursor to our call for neo-advocacy. This recognises the value of challenge and agonistic exchange in planning. Since the late 1980s and 1990s, forms of collaborative planning theory derived from social theorists such as Jurgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens have featured prominently in the planning discipline (for example, see Friedmann, 1987; Forester, 1994; Healey, 1997; 2003). The main features of collaborative planning rest on a model in which interested parties work through planning questions together. This is informed by a communicative approach, itself defined as a dialogical and participatory endeavour (Sager, 2018). This perspective

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implicitly places pressure on governments and local authorities to adopt more deliberative and inclusionary planning practices. Collaborative planning recognises that both formal processes and other less formalised attempts to engineer participation have not gone far enough in ensuring a more plural, transparent and accountable planning process. Collaborative planning also contains an implicit critique of the more confrontational or agonistic approach intimated in advocacy planning models and their failure to resolve the crisis of legitimacy associated with rational top-down planning. This criticism had some foundation; pre-existing advocacy efforts had been largely unsuccessful in transforming the lot of those under-represented and, in some cases, had been accused of misrepresenting communities, a charge still made against some NGOs (Clark, 1992; Checkoway, 1994). We do not seek to extend theoretical understandings of collaborative planning or agonism in particular here (see Mouffe, 1999; 2005; 2007; Pløger, 2004; Hillier, 2002; Gualini, 2015). It is important, however, to relate our main call about the need for advocacy forms in planning with the collaborative strand of participatory planning (for example, Forester, 1994; Healey, 2003; Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000; Benner and Pastor, 2015; Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger, 1998). Various voices have identified a need to develop a response to planning under neoliberal conditions and to think about how to change the prevailing conditions of operation. This can be summarised as a shift towards ‘post-collaborative’ planning forms (Brownill and Parker, 2010; Grange, 2014; Watson, 2014). These acknowledge more explicitly the concern that forms of collaborative planning can be manipulated and are often offered only on the terms dictated by powerful interests. Such a development in theory, informed by numerous examples of ‘outsider’ planning activity, embraces a range of actions and arrangements to create and support activist planning or insurgent planning forms (Hillier, 2002; Friedmann, 2011; Sager, 2011; 2016). These forms do not necessarily reject the potentials of various formulations of coproduction in theory (Albrechts, 2012; Watson, 2014; Parker et al, 2015), but more readily bring into view concerns about the terms and conditions surrounding models of co-production/co-management/

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co-governance relating to power relations, equity and transparency of outcome. The collaborative planning model has many strengths including the potential to reveal issues and then move towards conflict resolution, but key critical questions have been raised. For example, Huxley (2000) and Huxley and Yiftachel (2000) argue that collaborative planning is susceptible to co-option and that early academic proponents had somewhat downplayed the asymmetries of power and knowledge that persist between participants, as well as the barriers present and efforts needed to address these imbalances. In a similar vein, others have suggested collaborative theory is rather naïve in its treatment of the (uneven) distribution and use of power in planning (for example, Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 1998; Brownill, 2009; Mouffe, 2007). Others highlight how the need to facilitate and support some groups or interests more than others was left somewhat implicit and poorly defined, while the principle of equitable consensus, a central plank of collaborative planning, has been seen as problematic by some (Neuman, 2000). In response, one of the main proponents of collaborative planning, Patsy Healey, offered some clarification about the preconditions for collaborative planning success. She highlighted the need to reflect the socialities of planning practice and to reorient structures and adapt practices accordingly, to enable a communicative rationality to emerge in different circumstances (Healey, 2003). In sum, the need for a number of structural adjustments to collaborative planning has been recognised. Yet the naïve use of collaborative forms may jeopardise rather than enable the effective defence of a range of interests (Campbell and Marshall, 2002; Murphy and Fox-Rogers, 2015). In effect, the misapplication of collaborative planning modes could prove less inclusive than, say, forms of enlightened paternalism. Operationally, it may be that unless closely overseen by a neutral party, public agencies cannot be trusted to maintain a collaborative planning. Somewhat ironically (and not uncontroversially), there may be a role for an ‘authoritative’ power and the ability to close down ‘impossible’ debate (Hillier, 2003; Swyngedouw, 2010), without it simply involving foreclosure.

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Care is needed in setting boundary rules that simultaneously enable as well as (necessarily) constrain participants in post-collaborative planning practice (Healey, 2015). This requires public authorities to be committed (in philosophical and practical terms) and cognisant of the issues and fragilities involved. It is necessary therefore to ask, ‘Can they do this?’ One has to question the capacity and likely commitment given past experience. Given the need for independence and sometimes partisan support, our view is that an independent body appears to give the best chance of calling powerful interests to account and ensuring that local authorities behave in good faith. This formulation, which we outline further in Chapter Five, will draw on a variety of educative, collaborative, agonistic and advocacy tools and practices that we choose to group under the label of neo-advocacy. Returning now to our historical review of the UK case, a failure to significantly alter planning in line with collaborative planning theory, as well as a recognition that orthodox planning process developed in the post-Second World War period were inadequate (despite attempts to de-centre them), led to a new wave of pressure for more progressive and radical planning forms. In the UK context, political change has also informed these calls. The rise of the New Right during the 1980s was followed by a modernised form of social democracy under the New Labour administrations in which neoliberal reforms of planning also featured. Since 2010, these have been followed by yet more waves of neoliberal policy which have been partnered by a localism agenda. Reforms to planning in the UK have been numerous but are largely informed by new public management thinking to speed up planning and make it more procedurally efficient. Together these reforms have conspired to reveal the weaknesses rather than the strengths of collaborative planning and the lack of political will to radically alter planning in terms of its pluralistic credentials. One reading of the localist strand of recent planning policy in England is that it is designed to pass responsibility for planning to local people rather than enable or support them to challenge dominant interests. The localism offered up is therefore highly constrained and communities are expected

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to respond and take up planning activity as part of a ‘gift’ exchange (Boyte, 2005) where the reciprocation is to accept new development. This situation has provoked a new wave of ‘post-collaborative’ planning thinking that is having recourse to agonistic forms. Such accounts reflect upon how change from various forms of radical or activist planning can assist in orientating and transforming planning and those involved in planning. Sager (2016; 2018) argues that activist planning is a response to the lack of inroads made in challenging and dismantling the increasing hegemony of neoliberal policies and practices. Frustration with formal participation is always likely and indeed those who perceive themselves as marginalised or who stand to ‘lose’ in the outcomes of limited participation avenues may well have recourse to alternative means. Activist planning transcends formal/ informal and outsider/insider channels of engagement and indeed there are clearly different types of activist planning. Sager (2016) is at pains to point out that not all activist planning need necessarily be geared to resisting or contesting neoliberal process, frames of decisionmaking or outcomes. Equally there is merit in creating institutional spaces for activity that straddles the above divides. There are many protest groups who are simply reacting against a perceived injustice or who lack voice, but may of course be quite happy with the prevailing status quo. Indeed, they may be acting to attain a privileged role in the system, for example by achieving extra policy protection from development. All of these motives have been recorded as drivers for ‘outsider’ activity and insider participation through neighbourhood planning in England (see Parker et al, 2015; 2017). This suggests that the basis for neo-advocacy needs to rest on reformulated institutional arrangements that do not map easily onto simple, binary notions of outsider/insider. The consideration of outsider pressure as a form of engagement with planning has connection to both conceptual and practical debates over agonism and agonistic pluralism. This perspective is influenced by authors such as Chantal Mouffe but also stretches back to earlier work in planning by the advocacy theorists whose intent was to challenge power (see Chapter Four). Mouffe’s work highlights the healthy

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benefits of contestation and conflict in political decisions and makes a break from standard notions of deliberative democracy by stressing political disagreement as legitimate and necessary. From this view the antagonistic nature of social relations that is seen as constituting ‘the political’, where politics is seen as the ‘ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions which seek to establish a certain order and to organise human co-existence in conditions which are always potentially conflictual’ (Mouffe, 2007: 42). Indeed, Mouffe refers to pluralist politics as a ‘mixed game’ where collaborative and conflictual elements need to be present, while also acknowledging the significant challenges presented in satisfactorily achieving goal alignment (Mouffe, 1999; Grange, 2014). This organisational requirement involves transparency, learning and mutual adjustment so that the outcomes are at least accountable and understood. Mouffe’s call for an agonistic pluralism (Mouffe, 1993; 1999; 2007; Stratford et al, 2003) therefore requires a ‘mature’ form of agonism, where the arena is characterised by exchange between ‘legitimate adversaries’. It seems most probable that designing and managing processes which feature agonistic pluralism requires time, understanding, evidence, learning and resources – as well as flexibility and continuity in all of the above. It is such a set of conditions that also serve to provoke our thinking about how to bring effective neo-advocacy into being, partly to service a functioning agonistic pluralism which has been recognised as means to develop just outcomes (see Davoudi and Bell, 2016; Harwood, 2003).

What is the neoliberal and how does it have an impact on UK planning? The decisions made, politics formulated and development sites and policies in question are often claimed as the material and spatial manifestations of neoliberalism. A wide-ranging critique has been rehearsed about how such modalities and techniques influence and shape governance, and in particular about how those who are less able to negotiate on the terms offered by neoliberal formulations are affected. As Larner (2000) emphasises: ‘Neo-liberalism is both a political discourse about the nature of rule and a set of practices

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that facilitate the governing of individuals from a distance’ (2000: 6). However, this is not all that such an orientation covers. Indeed, we should not assume some homogeneous or hegemonic neoliberalised regime. Instead multiple formulations and assemblages of neoliberal institutional arrangements are apparent, as highlighted by Brenner et al (2010) in arguing that there is considerable variegation found across territories and situations. While there is difference in the arenas that are used to contest neoliberal trajectories of governance, such orientations tend to favour capital and those with the ability to engage on the terms offered. We perceive that the current avenues for participation and voice in the UK planning systems could be exercised by all comers but they clearly favour some over others by dint of available means and other entry costs. Indeed, this has been the case since the beginnings of the formal planning system in the UK; access has been limited and unequal. A further difficulty for community interests, which is also not new, is that they may be faced with both a strong private sector and a dismissive public sector. The neoliberal has also been closely associated with techniques labelled as ‘post-political’ and/or representing forms of post-democratic governance. Much of this analysis has focused on the way that neoliberal agents have attempted to impose a particular view (for example, of the need for development) and of how to organise society. In doing so, techniques are required to help embed these views as part of a process which is also pre-conditioned on the foreclosure of alternatives. Larner’s (2000) appreciation of neoliberal approaches is useful here in that it can be related to the practices of planning and what neoliberalism means for different actors. The Foucauldian emphasis reflected in Larner’s (2000) assessment prompts thinking about self-governance, power and participation in planning. The political discourse about the nature of rule can be seen in the way in which market values have been espoused in planning and through the responsibilisation agenda (see Pemberton and Morphet, 2013) and visible in the English version of localism operated since 2010. The need for neo-advocacy in this context is not about handing over ‘powers’ or ‘rights’ to communities or ‘back door’ responsibilisation, but rather

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as tools to aid challenges to neoliberal development agendas as part of a progressive refraction of the responsibilisation agenda. There has been much scholarly interest in the use of governance tools used to try and bring neoliberal ideas into being. This is typically found in the design of policy and funding arrangements, including the effect of imposed boundary rules and processes in setting limits of possibility (Peck and Theodore, 2012). The neoliberalisation of public policy, and of planning by association, has induced a range of behaviours from different actors involved. The strength of business interests and the primacy of quantitative and financial data has lent further impetus to a tendency to distrust both public planning and the development industry, playing out in forms of NIMBYism, disengagement and the provocation of fragmented protest. Surveys exploring public attitudes to participation (for example, Lowndes et al, 2001) appear to confirm such concerns. Furthermore, recent research commissioned by DCLG found that the overwhelming majority of the public did not see financial incentives as appropriate means for resolving planning conflict (DCLG, 2017), despite a clear preference from the UK government to try and use monetary inducements as a means to offset opposition to development. This antipathy towards attempts to engage or otherwise buy consent has been mixed with a blend of ignorance on the part of communities about how to influence change. Indeed, for local authorities the period since 1980 has seen successive governments bear down on them, insisting on speed, efficiency and that they adopt a ‘business-friendly’ orientation. Unsurprisingly, this has not been viewed as entirely compatible with inclusive participation efforts. For the development industry, the period since 1980 has seen them take advantage of the climate of business-friendly policy, serial attempts to deregulate planning, and drives to make efficiencies in local authority services. This situation has given rise to an ancillary area of professional work in public relations that has developed to service a perceived need to work with communities on consultation processes (see Norton and Hughes, 2017). There is more than a hint of suspicion that this form of consultation lends a sheen of community-derived legitimacy

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to pre-existing (possibly with marginal adjustments) development proposals. The balance here tends to be about persuading communities about developer inspired futures, and given our focus, can be seen as representing a form of private interest advocacy. Thus, a curious gap has emerged over time with national government claiming to want the planning system to be one that is ‘rooted in civic engagement and collaborative democracy’ (Conservative Party, 2010: 1). Such rhetoric, however, when compared to on-the-ground experience, highlights a disparity in terms of actually addressing the question of inclusive processes, rather than paying lip service to it or allowing a widening gap to persist given investment in private advocacy. An undercurrent here is a concern from government that unless tightly circumscribed, or managed by private interests, participatory practice will act to inconvenience local and national politics and disrupt standard models of policy implementation.

Neighbourhood planning as a neoliberal response to planning conflict The Localism Act has been seen as reflecting the neoliberal project being pursued and applied in local governance (for example, Featherstone et al, 2012; Clarke and Cochrane, 2013; Williams et al, 2014) and witnessed in planning specifically (Sager, 2011; Davoudi and Madanipour, 2013; Bradley, 2015). It is claimed that neighbourhood planning provides part of the cover for austerity measures and a restructuring of the welfare state along ideological lines. It also reflects the tensions inherent in UK Conservative party politics which attempts to reconcile pro-market (and pro-development) sensibilities with the political reality that the Party is somewhat beholden to antidevelopment constituents who resent localised outcomes of economic and population growth. Neighbourhood planning under the banner of localism was presented as a solution to a widely held perception by members of the public that local authorities and government retained too much control over planning in England and that ‘planned’ outcomes had been unsatisfactory.

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The UK coalition government elected in 2010 wanted to restructure planning; seeing it variously as a bureaucratic brake on economic growth and, echoing prior government orientations since the Thatcher years (1979–90), sought to speed up, simplify and make planning processes more accountable. In order to also resolve the problem of how to ‘unblock’ the system and promote housing development, a rescaling of planning was proposed. This entailed the stripping away of the regional tier of the planning system and the introduction of neighbourhood planning. This became a central feature of the localism agenda as expressed in the 2011 Localism Act in England and was claimed to be a significant means through which to address issues of community empowerment. Neighbourhood planning was also promoted as delivering more localised ownership and control over the planning process. Regardless of its wider credentials and performance (see Parker and Salter, 2017; Brownill and Bradley, 2017) neighbourhood planning is also an expression of co-produced planning. It features a partnership between local authorities, communities and private consultants. It is also an experiment that is both bounded and yet also curiously open for participants to self-create. This somewhat contradictory combination has resulted in a skewed take-up across England as well as providing conditions for some policy innovation and refinement. However, more radical intent can be modulated or scripted out (Parker et al, 2015; Taylor, 2011), with examples of novel or progressive policy being limited. There are concerns with process and questions of inclusivity as well as quality of the output of neighbourhood planning too. The basis for engagement with planning issues offered by neighbourhood planning and the conditions and capacities existing across the thousands of very different ‘neighbourhoods’ in England provide just some of the cleavages seen as likely to affect engagement with this set of planning tools (Parker and Murray, 2012; Swyngedouw, 2005; Bailey and Pill, 2015; Vigar et al, 2017). Davoudi and Madanipour (2013) argue that deploying technologies of agency to animate neighbourhoods relies on the (uneven) willingness of individuals to engage effectively. For its proponents, this is portrayed

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as ‘unlocking’ the potential of individuals at the neighbourhood scale which, in the past, has been supposedly stifled by both the state and professional ‘experts’. Neighbourhood planning also appears to decentre professional planners from the planning process and is underpinned by a presumption (made by government) that local people have sufficient interest in planning to invest their time and energy and, moreover, to do so over a sustained period. This is a stance that seems ignorant of past inertias (Fagence, 1977) and the longstanding debates around advocacy planning, including the need to support and inform communities (see Parker and Street, 2015a). The UK government has downplayed asymmetries of knowledge and capacity or other differences existing between one neighbourhood and another. Instead, an unproblematic or uniform view of neighbourhood propensities is apparent in governmental materials relating to neighbourhood planning. A further assumption, that designated neighbourhood areas will be homogeneous and reflect bounded spatial units containing like-minded people is apparent (Davoudi and Madanipour, 2013; 2015). There seems to be an implicit belief that those people are willing to interact to achieve outcomes that serve the public good and that self-interest will be set aside. This disregards wider structural processes that may disrupt such assumptions, issues of lack of trust in the system (for example, Menzel et al, 2013) and past work which is cautionary about the challenges of working with multi-faceted neighbourhoods (for example, Bailey and Pill, 2015; Colomb, 2017). Davoudi and Cowie (2013) highlight that such a combination may result in the favouring of better educated, well-off and more vocal social groups who have the time, capacity and inclination to engage. Recent research has indicated that these concerns are being borne out in neighbourhood planning practice (Parker and Salter, 2017). The critical perspectives outlined above provide a stark contrast to the rhetoric generated by the coalition government who aspired to use neighbourhood planning as an important element in making planning more creative, accessible and inclusive (DCLG, 2012: i–ii). Consideration of neoliberal governance and how public participation

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is constructed and managed within it is important here because it forms part of the contextual frame both present and past into which efforts to empower communities are set and can be understood. The other motif seen in neighbourhood planning and discussed at some length in the academic literature is the concept of co-production as a route to developing shared and mutually understood agendas and forms of action. This may be regarded as another formulation with collaborative planning credentials, which needs careful assessment given the weaknesses identified with collaborative planning models.

Co-production as participation in planning Co-production can take numerous forms, involving a variety of actors who are either induced to participate or become involved more organically. Ostrom argued that this is ‘a process through which inputs from individuals who are not “in” the same organisation are transformed into goods and services’ (Ostrom, 1996: 1073), although our reading is that the outcomes of co-production forms also assist in developing knowledge and strategy. Brandsen and Pestoff (2006) highlight differences between co-governance (planning and delivery), co-management (joint production) and co-production (citizen production). This has import insofar that different elements or stages of planning practice appear more or less relevant to those subdivisions but can, nevertheless, be expressed together as ‘co-production’ for our purposes. Co-production thinking was first developed in relation to partnerships between sectoral actors in developing country contexts and through work on governance systems such as Ostrom’s (1996). The basic premise of co-production is that different actors utilise each other’s resources to form a mutually desired output. This is ideally achieved through co-creation, alongside processes of mutual learning and understanding. Many participatory technologies that claim co-production credentials feature decentralisation, or are at least localised in some sense; with an emphasis on active citizenship (for example, Pestoff et al, 2012; Agger, 2012) and appropriate scales of focus (that is, by geography or issue).

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Prior considerations of co-production forms also emphasise relations of critical dependency and highlight uneven co-production. This literature indicates how seemingly benign or progressive collaborative forms, into which category many co-production examples fall, can all too easily involve governmental, or other self-interested parties, attempt to align communities towards particular objectives (Sørensen and Torfing, 2009; Parker et al, 2015) and act to obscure the limited range of options or inputs considered. Viewing the possibilities of co-production from a citizen perspective, Albrechts (2012) sees citizen-led co-production as part of a political strategy utilised by communities to engage with state actors. Beard (2012) sees a role for citizen planners working within sets of norms, or to otherwise work out how to shape ‘rules that protect the integrity of the planning process but also its resources from elite capture’ (2012: 709). At its best, system transformation may be possible by adopting such models; early proponents of collaborative forms such as Friedmann (1987) saw the potential beyond existing state channels of policy formulation in engaging in co-produced practices. Friedmann’s perspective links well to considerations of learning and deeper or ‘double-loop’ learning, as emphasised by authors such as Schon (1983) and Innes and Booher (1999; 2015). However, in order for these forms of ‘deeper’ learning to be brought forward, several pre-conditions are necessary, including developing protocols about the process. The creative use of e-tools and other political tools such as referenda, as experimented with in English neighbourhood planning (see Parker et al, 2015), or seen in public debates over the best ways forward to enhance legitimacy (Alexander, 2008) also have potential. If such measures were adopted for plan-making and strategy formulation more widely then there may well be less controversy and uncertainty surrounding individual developments and a more inclusive approach adopted. Such changes may even play well with business interests in preparing a much smoother and conciliatory approach towards development. However, we should still be aware that the dangers of ineffective system design and inadequate safeguards still apply, despite the allure of technological fixes.

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Our main task here has been to outline how ideas about coproduction, and the arrangements they take on, should be applied and supported. There is a need for other sources of knowledge and information to be fed directly to citizens and communities and vice versa. This aspiration follows the intent of co-production models where new ideas and data from which to base policy and research are generated and agreed among citizens (Watson, 2014), hence the design and structure of co-production becomes critical in order to ensure that it is worthwhile, fair and high quality. We can distill seven themes or issues from this reflection about some of the pre-requisites for effective participatory planning: • Mobilisation: who and how, and on what basis, is co-production/ co-governance organised; • Decentralisation: sourcing and application of knowledge in relation to context and scale; • Inputs: the sourcing and recognition of different types of evidence and how these are treated and integrated; • Relations: recognising the need for connection and communication and of power which may distort knowledge; • Control: and empowerment the governance of process and the role of each partner; • Purpose: to what end is the co-production designed, or what it actually produces in application. • Support: how will partners be enabled and supported to engage? The deliberative (‘consider the alternatives’) and collaborative (‘work inclusively’) features of a new advocacy toolkit have been embraced quite widely, if loosely, by those in the planning profession and, to a lesser degree, within government. They have not, however, been effective in delivering widespread change along equity lines. Arguments that deliberative and collaborative features should be regarded as normative goods rely too much on openness of actors operating in good faith – and risk falling victim to the wider politics of planning. Without a more effective assembly and facilitation of relevant tools

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and support, the impact of deliberative and collaborative features in planning have will remain marginal. In Chapter Three, we set out an alternative model; that of advocacy loosely based on agonistic pluralism that acts to support and enable co-production or other means to effect voice and alterity.

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THREE Advocacy planning: then and now

Efforts to widen and deepen participation, develop progressive aims and enhance the legitimacy of decisions in local governance have acted to provoke a renewed concern with the redesign of institutions to enable these aims (Healey, 2003; Cleaver, 1999; Cleaver et al, 2001). Ostrom’s (1996; 2000) work on institutions derives from a research context exploring multi-stakeholder governance of natural resources, but also concludes that new ways of structuring governance arrangements more generally should provide citizens with a necessary and more effective role in modern democracies. There is clear influence from Hegelian philosophy latent in such arguments, where the highest of human needs is purported to be the need for participation (Sabine and Thorson, 1973). This speaks to participation in planning as being important for the fulfilment of citizenship beyond individual self-interest and to contribute to shaping the future. As discussed in Chapter Two, despite theoretical bases that promote participation in planning practice, the profession has wrestled uneasily with the challenge of community engagement since at least the 1960s. There has been limited acceptance of participation efforts offered by public authorities and private developers; both sectors tend to relegate participation for different reasons and it typically remains either underresourced or marginalised. A cynic might ask why would the powerful

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wish it any other way? After all it is rather a leap of faith to think that fulfilling citizenship is enough of a motivating factor for those with their own agendas, instrumental orientations and limited resources, particularly when control of the planning process mitigates against political and economic risk. In light of such behaviours the current operating environment of planning practice in England has been subject to a well-developed critique of the impacts of neoliberal planning forms and the agency of the development industry, as well as government (Sager, 2011; Davoudi and Madanipour, 2013). Concerns over a depoliticisation effect on planning have also been iterated (Ghose, 2005; Brenner et al, 2010; Hall, 2011; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012), while others point to how this results in those with power and resources maintaining a critical degree of control in the system (Newman, 2014; Neilson and Rossiter, 2008). In short, the planning system, and present planning structures in England at least, appear to do little to rebalance access to knowledge and support towards those that need it most (despite claims otherwise). Access to planning knowledge and influence today is arguably still disproportionately under the control of power elites and the formal opportunities to engage are unattractive and weakly resourced. Such concerns are not new and were first expressed in parallel to the first waves of advocacy planning. An example is Lindblom’s work in the 1970s on markets and planning which recognised the idea of unequal access to the policy process and highlighted the influence of business interests and the dangers of corporatism disguised as collaboration in planning (Lindblom, 1977). Prior to such perspectives being widely applied to planning, we can discern how Dahl (1982), in his seminal Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, argued that ‘social structures and civic consciousness influence one another’ (1982: 138). Through a positive open relationship, it was argued that a dynamic interplay could develop, forming a basis for democratic society and an important influence on change. In a more plural society, how voices and public consciousness is developed, heard and responded to is challenging and this influenced others to apply the theory. While not downplaying the difficulties

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inherent in developing institutions to embrace this, Dahl set out five basic criteria for a pluralist democracy (1982: 6, emphasis added): 1.  equality in voting; 2.  effective participation; 3.  inclusion; 4.  enlightened understanding; 5.  control of the agenda and delegation. In particular the middle three on this list: participation, inclusion and enlightened understanding intimate a need to organise planning processes in such a way that recognises the principles of public education and involvement. This places a stress on planning policymakers to incorporate such characteristics, despite practical difficulties or possible imperfections. Dahl (1982: 40) goes on to say that ‘independent organisations: may distort, conceal the agenda, or stabilise injustice’ and as a result there is a need to ensure that any effort to address the challenge of enabling communities to engage fully will need its own accountabilities. This may involve identifying roles that are best performed outwith public authorities given that, for some commentators, collaborative forms can be regressive and obscure inequity. This also indicates a role for intermediary actors whose main contribution is to enable a fair process. Collaborative theory and practice, stemming from such social theory contributions, may be seen as an attempt to respond to such broad agendas, but the attempts made have not been able to redress unequal or inequitable outcomes. Indeed, a key element of the critique of collaborative forms has been that substantive ends are downplayed and the tendency to avoid difficult questions of power imbalances are elided. Related discussions of dialogical and collaborative planning have led to calls for a more critical analysis of outcomes and to develop a ‘post-collaborative’ participation offer. This is a strand which highlights the challenges involved, and the range of contexts and conditions that are producing and shaping participatory episodes (Brownill and Parker, 2010; Brownill, 2009). This shift potentially involves the integration

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of more agonistic approaches (Pløger, 2004; Hillier, 2002), while recognising that, ultimately, means of reconciliation and resolution are also required. Recently, debates over the ‘just city’ and concerns over spatial justice (Soja, 2010; Fainstein, 2010; Harvey, 2012; Benner and Pastor, 2015; Taylor and Edwards, 2016; Harwood, 2003; Davoudi and Bell, 2016) have continued the trope and have embraced concerns over how to mobilise alternative perspectives which reflect a mistrust of formal participation offers. This situation impels us to review advocacy forms and outsider activism as a legitimate element of progressive ‘post-collaborative’ planning.

Advocacy planning types Proponents of pluralistic approaches to institutional design argue that organising governance structures to reflect both the political and the plural nature of modern societies can help to bring forward different knowledge forms and lead towards better understanding of needs and preferences, more effective policymaking and wider engagement. The priority of the political pluralists in this (and more particularly the neopluralists) is to ensure that all interests are considered and discussed, so that whatever outcomes result they are transparent and understood. This coincides with the dialogical component of collaborative planning theory, but also with attempts to capture and reflect the latent power and knowledge forms existing across society. Friere’s (1970) notion of critical pedagogy is pertinent here, given the need to ensure learning (and ideally double-loop learning) to occur among the public and other actors. Such a process would enable mutual learning, adaptation and further capacity building as part of the new sub-politics highlighted by Beck (1994) and, from there, practical application to local policymaking. Friere highlights how such an approach can deepen critical awareness of reality and of how ‘lived experience is constructed by power’ (1970: 79). His contention is that, if mobilised effectively, such efforts can enable participants to ‘take ownership’ of the process and the issues at hand, and aid in forming their understandings of how to make a difference.

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Lipsky (1970) argued that even insurgent forms of planning carry a danger of only being sustained by those able to do so from within their own means; implying that others may be more likely to disengage and become sidelined. Neo-pluralist thinking emphasises the unevenness of the positions of multiple groups in society and, in relation to participation, highlighted the need for intermediaries – citing this contemporaneously with early advocacy planning (for example, Barnard and Vernon, 1975). Sager’s (2016) work exploring activist forms of planning highlights how a rational response to ineffective participation channels can be to agitate for change outwith the system and in some circumstances to draw on intermediate actors. Seemingly in tune with this assessment, Benner and Pastor (2015) note how the apparently competing models of collaborative and advocacy planning may be applied and combined creatively both to develop knowledge and understanding, and to hold powerful interests to account. How to actualise such a formula remains unresolved of course, given the possible threat to powerful interests. Some authors have provided more general preconditions for such advances, including allowing for a political culture that sustains the institutional design and learning opportunities that post-collaborative planning should feature. Beck terms this a ‘sub-politics’ which requires a reshaping of (local) politics, such that actors who are typically ‘outside’ of the political system appear ‘on the stage of social design’ (1994: 22). Thus, for progressive, if incremental, change to occur it follows that there must be robust and transparent opportunities to engage (Hillier, 2003; Mouffe, 1999; 2005). Processual and enforceable safeguards need to be developed to maintain the integrity of the engagement process and, critically, support to induce such involvement is required. In order to sustain either of the activist or radical expressions of advocacy, education and skills development are clearly required. Professional planners were identified by advocacy theorists as being needed ‘to educate the community, to communicate and to translate the increasingly technical language of professional planning’ (Heskin, 1980: 57). Lane (2005: 293) highlights that advocacy planning forms, in theory at least, also looked to ‘unsettle’ the planning system, regardless

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of the particular formulations or labels which may be applied to it. This advocacy aimed to ensure that unheard or invisible interests were articulated and, as far as possible, accommodated in decision-making. Implicit in the approach is the rejection of the notion of a unitary public interest and that outcomes must be developed that reflect and serve a diverse society and considerations of sustainable development are acknowledged. This requires that questions of futurity, equity, environment, development and participation be adequately served and awareness of the criticality of this ethos developed among societal groups and interests (Naess, 2001; Godschalk, 2004; Doak and Parker, 2018). Beginning with the assumption of political plurality, advocacy planners are essentially facilitators whose central task is to catalyse the participation of inarticulate actors, help marginalised groups to be afforded space or, alternatively, to advocate for such interests directly. Such individuals taking on these roles may include elected politicians (with a view to recentring them away from managerialist orientations) and others with relevant skills and experience – as well as professional planners and community members who may have developed relevant repertoires as part of a particular type of local ‘advocacy coalition’. Such coalitions do not readily equate to the coalitions discussed in the public policy literature under the label of Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) studies (see Weible et al, 2011) but instead sit as rolling teams or partnerships that are a feature of the neo-advocacy approach as discussed below (and in Chapter Five). Such groupings or assemblages will also require learning as a co-operative, co-constructed activity and this aspect does correspond to ACF theory, yet it is still quite challenging to see how dominant interests will formally countenance advocacy forms. Despite this, we will argue that advocacy planning initiatives can still play a role in operating between powerful interests and that an empowered plural community needs recognition and adequate resource. That said, studies that have looked carefully at the implementation of advocacy planning theory and practice have pointed to its limitations and the deep-rooted difficulties in solving the challenges that it has sought to address (Friedmann, 1987;

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Forester, 1994; Piven, 1970; Peattie, 1978; 1994; Neuman, 2000; Allmendinger, 2004; Gualini, 2015). It is clearly a chronic issue and perhaps a quixotic task but local decision-making needs the threat and practice of reformulated advocacy in order to help call it to account. Our composite model of neo-advocacy is where elements of collaborative learning, co-production relations and earlier forms of advocacy as representation are interwoven in a syncretic postcollaborative approach to participatory planning. Our view is that neoadvocacy can be developed and co-provided by professional planners but also by others who have experience of community organising, undertaking negotiations and project management more widely, and by those drawn from across allied professions operating in the built and natural environment.

Urging advocacy While participation in planning has been discussed at length in a burgeoning literature, the purposes of participation are often elided and as such it is worth reiterating that advocacy planning forms seek to actively challenge power. In this respect one of the key and distinctive attributes of advocacy planning has lain in the positioning of planners (and others involved). The traditional advocacy model implies that the planner sits outwith formal institutions by working with those who do not have existing knowledge of the system, capacity to act, or effective voice. In that sense the orientation is very much towards those who are in some sense disadvantaged by their situation and the ‘planner as advocate’ steps in (or ‘out’) to assist. In line with the vision of earlier advocacy proponents, the advocacy planner’s role was one that became most necessary in extremis (as lightheartedly indicated in Figure 1.2 earlier) to intervene, represent and speak on behalf of the disempowered. While the aim to reverse or rebalance priorities for planning practice has underpinned the advocacy model promulgated by Davidoff (1965) and others (see, for example, Mazziotti, 1974; Checkoway, 1994; Sandercock, 1998; Harwood, 2003), widespread advocacy and

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effective support are so far largely unattained in the UK, despite the best efforts of largely voluntary NGOs such as Planning Aid England, Planning Aid London, Planning Aid Scotland and Planning Aid Wales (referred to here collectively as ‘Planning Aid’). These groups remain constrained by resources, support and reach. Indeed, more recent trends appear to make the prospect of effective neo-advocacy forms seem more distant (see Clayton et al, 2016) as explained in Chapter Four. More positively a shift in emphasis to recognise network building and power in combination of different resources when applied to planning problems seems fruitful and we discuss this in Chapter Five. Arguments honed to justify advocacy planning, or ‘equity planning’ (Forester, 1994; Krumholz and Forester, 1990), were initially prompted by a concern with the ‘unjustifiable’, inequitable outcomes associated with ‘rational’ planning (Altshuler, 1965; Gans, 1982; Hoch, 1994). A second prompt was where policy selection was seen to be embedded in the political process (Krumholz, 1994: 150). In this view, the process needed to be opened up and ‘recentred’ and the plans being developed by the state and the private sector needed to be interrogated. Hoch (1994) argued that: ‘when the powerful use [these] plans, it is often to achieve the insidious goal of justifying private and political interests as public goods’ (Hoch, 1994: 274). Paul Davidoff (1965) reflected widespread concerns about inequalities of access to decisionmaking processes and the seemingly unjust outcomes wrought by urban renewal schemes in the 1950s and 1960s. Altshuler (1965) also argued that the plans made by professional planners were themselves selectively adopted by other powerful agents. These early voices reflected a widening perception that planning policy and outcomes were as much reflections of political and economic power as they were technical, rational expressions of the ‘public interest’ (Benner and Pastor, 2015). The solution was to reveal this and challenge the powerful regarding their assumptions and claims to representativeness. Davidoff’s perspective and call to action still resonates today: The recommendation that city planners represent and plead the plans of many interest groups is founded upon the need to

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establish an effective urban democracy, one in which citizens may be able to play an active role in the process of deciding public policy. Appropriate policy in democracy is determined through a process of political debate. The right course of action is always a matter of choice, never of fact. In a bureaucratic age great care must be taken that choices remain in the area of public view. (Davidoff, 1965: 424) Articulate and powerful groups have the resources and ability to mobilise the relevant skills and influence to shape city plans to serve their own interests. Davidoff and others such as Mazziotti (1974), argued that many do not have such capacities, or at least that capacities or needs cannot be brought to the table without either support or representation as direct advocacy. Advocacy theorists called on professional planners to act to champion the interests of those who were marginalised and Peattie (1978) identified three forms of advocacy planning that had emerged in the US. The first was the classic advocacy form where ‘desirable processes of change are arrived at by a more inclusively pluralistic political process’ (Peattie, 1978: 88). This formulation is the approach that comes closest to collaborative planning models and requires a softer, less partisan sensibility – perhaps implying the advocate planner act as mediator. In this mode the role of a mediator or central authority becomes important during the process stages as well as at the decision phase. Dangers of co-option or marginalisation of community-generated issues or solutions remain an issue here. Terming this formulation ‘classic’ implies that it is the most common approach. Indeed, if it is a more mainstream variant then it seems to be so precisely because it is more palatable for existing powerful interests to contemplate and more straightforward for the individuals performing the advocacy role. The second is an activist strand which, while viewing modifications of policy and outcome deriving from the classic approach as desirable, regards the ‘true’ aim of advocacy as being the raising of radical consciousness and organisational competency. This formulation is often identified with capacity building as a key feature but with a view to

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ensuring that communities also develop wider critical awareness of the motives and strategies of dominant actors in development. This means nurturing an understanding of how to make use of a range of tactics and strategies in order to make progressive gains in the interests of the community. The third is a radical iteration whereupon ‘radical political change in the base of society is necessary’ (Peattie, 1978: 88) and where, so the argument runs, advocacy can assist in that endeavour. This formulation of advocacy sees education and empowerment as a prerequisite, and political awareness an important feature for those involved as partners. The radical formulation typically involves a wariness of representation by others given the possibility of appropriation or co-option. Beard’s (2012) work meanwhile also categorises citizen-planner activity into three types or modes of planning as: ‘community-based’, ‘covert’ and ‘radical’ with some clear overlap with the forms of advocacy planning highlighted by Peattie. While Davidoff’s work was most probably influenced by Alinsky’s radical agitation (see Benner and Pastor, 2015), the type of urban democracy envisaged by critics of orthodox planning called for a community politics to challenge dominant planning forms. This may also be seen as a precursor of the turn towards considerations of dialogics and agonism. Chantal Mouffe’s work (for example, 1999; 2005; 2007) is based on the assumption of a more developed pluralist and agonistic participatory democracy that, according to Peattie, accounts for one outcome of successful advocacy engagement, and which implies a continued partisan role for planners. Yet the effectiveness of the forms and episodes of advocacy planning practised since the 1970s (see Bailey, 2010; Haughton and Allmendinger, 2013; Checkoway, 1994; Clavel, 1994; Forester, 1994; Peattie, 1968; 1978; 1994) remains questionable and issues remain regarding agonistic pluralism (see Gualini, 2015; Hillier, 2002; Mouffe, 2005). Equally, difficulties about where and how to deploy relevant models or combinations of apparently conflicting planning theory in suitable post-collaborative formulations persist (Benner and Pastor, 2015).

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Returning to accounts of advocacy in the US: these have included some rather sweeping assertions derived about how advocacy planning has performed or has been taken up. One example is Friedmann’s work (1987: 300) in which he argued that: ‘the notion of advocacy fitted quite comfortably into the reality of pluralist politics…as advocates, planners assumed the role of “public defenders” of the urban poor, and like public defenders in the courts, their work typically was paid for by the state.’ This implies that the role and the practice of advocacy was in some sense both straightforward and widespread. Indeed, as we set out below, the reality of advocacy as understood by the planning profession in the UK appears to lay quite far from such depictions. In the US, advocacy has been sporadic and uneven but there have been surges of such activity since the 1960s (see Krumholz, 1994 for example) as well as scepticism (for example, Piven, 1970). John Friedmann (1987) identified that some advocacy planning activity could be seen as forming ‘guidance’ as opposed to more radical ‘transformative’ planning activity; hence questions of definition may also be clouding readings of advocacy in the past. For the more transformative activity to occur he argued that a more fundamental shift in the relationship between planners and ‘clients’ needed to take place – where the client becomes an active partner in planning (Friedmann, 1973: 172). This formulation he labelled ‘transactive’ planning where mutual learning is a key characteristic. He also noted difficulties of reconciling advocacy in action with notions of the public interest which is ‘constructed through political debate and even conflict’ (Friedmann, 1987: 441). Indeed, for Friedmann the public interest is conceived as ‘the master of social processes and the final goal of planning in the public domain’ (Friedmann, 1987: 441). Such a perspective implies that the role of advocacy in planning is to effect a rebalancing or to ‘rescue’ public interest in practice as much as a radical change in structure. The distinction between guiding and transforming activity forms a useful heuristic when we consider Peattie’s (1978) categories and the key issues that have followed in advocacy planning more generally. We may also reflect on various roles for intermediaries including politicians

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and professional planners in those models. In the UK, numerous efforts to respond to claims of elitism, anti-democratic behaviour and spatial injustice were triggered in the 1960s and this produced a legacy of planning practice critique which still echoes loudly today. A more inclusive and open type of planning was increasingly viewed as a political necessity, and was reflected, if weakly, in accommodations for participation opportunities in the 1970s (see, for example, Doak and Parker, 2005; Brownill and Carpenter, 2007a; Monno and Khakee, 2012; Parker and Doak, 2018). In parallel ran ideas about how an independent organisation, beyond governmental interest or control could act as an advocacy agency for those otherwise unable to access the necessary specialist skills, knowledge and resources needed to engage in planning issues effectively. This line of thinking predated the collaborative model and has intermittently been revisited and relabelled in reference to ‘radical’ planning (Sandercock, 1998; Beard, 2003) and ‘insurgent’ planning (Miraftab, 2009; Friedmann, 2011).

Difficulties in practice Critiques of theorisations of collaborative planning forms, and of expressions of the classic form of advocacy, see a danger in such models bargaining away or concealing different needs or preferences (Gunder, 2010; Agger and Löfgren, 2008; Neuman, 2000). Indeed, early critics of public participation afforded by the state as ‘invited spaces’ recognised their disempowering potential (for example, Arnstein, 1969; Cockburn, 1977; Gaventa, 2004). Conversely Allmendinger (2009) has voiced a pessimistic line about advocacy planning, from the reverse perspective, pointing to the difficulties of pluralistic models of decision-making which can render areas ‘ungovernable’, while Harwood (2003) notes the difficulties of expecting planners who are based within existing power structures to embrace advocacy; this could involve them leading a somewhat double life as an advocacy exponent. Difficulties in developing pluralistic institutional arrangements are likely to continue and perfection in such endeavours is unlikely. What we are left with are numerous tools, strategies, theories and the benefit

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of past experience of advocacy planning. Relating these directly to neo-advocacy forms, it seems to us that the tensions apparent in past forms of advocacy, and the Planning Aid experience (Chapter Four), can be combined and summarised as follows: 1. difficulty of reach and selection of client groups or individuals for support; 2. the danger of limited or conditional support; 3. the possibility of limited horizons being offered up by advocates (that is, the ‘classic’ variant of advocacy); 4. a lack of organisation, capacity-building effort and infrastructure to create self-sustaining activist communities; and 5. a lack of resources to challenge elite or dominant interests effectively. Difficulties can be alleviated to some degree by stable funding support and clearer aims and objectives being pursued (see also Chapter Six). In the latter aspect the sensibility and nuancing of how, when, where and on what basis advocates are to be involved is crucial. Advocacy approaches include addressing the immediate needs of those who are excluded and who may suffer spatial and environmental injustices as well as longer-term capacity-building and policy ‘disruption’. Over time this has been acknowledged by numerous authors as an approach which recasts planners as proponents of particular solutions on behalf of those who would not otherwise have an effective voice. At its heart this approach also requires a certain amount of confrontation and some writers have indicated that the conflict associated to the model can sit uncomfortably with professional planners and their typical sensibility as ‘conflict avoiders’ (Neuman, 2000: 345). Yet there are numerous elements and actions that planners working in support of groups and communities can additionally provide: notably, to help structure evidence gathering and aid presentation, as well involving and enabling non-planners to ‘stand up on the day’ and contest issues.

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Thus, the representation and defence of the interests of those who are under-represented, and a desire to build capacity through education and other means of support, are together a central part of what we term a ‘neo-advocacy’ approach. This responds to a need for locally and temporally appropriate hybrid responses which retain a critical degree of independence from centres of power. In terms of the approach and ethos, this reflects a fluid hybrid of equity planning, transactive planning and the three advocacy forms rehearsed by Peattie and the practice will creatively combine tools and skills useful to pursue the case. The hypothesis being that such an approach can result in a nurturing of voice, capacity and challenge. Neo-advocacy also reflects a recognition that support for a renewed and rehabilitated advocacy is needed just as much now as it was in the conditions of the 1960s – if not more so. The literature discussing advocacy, ‘equity’ and empowermentplanning models (Krumholz and Forester, 1990; Friedmann, 1973; 1987; Krumholz, 1982; Peattie, 1978) has been largely hortatory and belies much of what we know about the difficulties in realising progressive planning forms and outcomes (see Matthews, 2013; Rydin, 2013; Checkoway, 1994). The focus has tended to rest on the theory, design, technique and process (Sandercock, 1998), rather than the conditions necessary for success, or reflections on actually occurring practice (although, see Krumholz, 1994). We perceive shifting tides of debate around the support for participation and in reaching beneficially progressive designs. The post-collaborative shift indicates a dissatisfaction with foregoing models and theoretical constructs; this is a line of thinking that has been brought into focus by the combinations of austerity, the neoliberal era and the longer running attempt by powerful groups to obscure or undermine existing participation. Thus, a view supported by neo-institutional analysis and neo-Marxist critique provides an indictment about how ‘actually occurring’ participatory planning has been rendered superficial in its design and execution, or otherwise particularised. Governmental efforts to induce particular forms of participation have invoked stage managed or narrow problematisations of the disconnect between the planning system and those it seeks to serve, with solutions

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variously including ‘simplifying planning’ and creating ‘new channels’ for participation as discussed in Chapter Two. An example of the tentative efforts of government in this area is exemplified by the UK New Labour government in its second term in office (2001–05), which sought to offer its own package to address barriers to engagement: many people…feel excluded in such a system because the process appears bureaucratic and forbidding, and because it seems too difficult and expensive to obtain legal information or advice. By simplifying processes, with clear opportunities for community involvement, we create [sic] a more effective, efficient and userfriendly service. (ODPM, 2004: 9) This period in reality produced only modest change and, if anything, acted to further confuse communities as the round of new legislative and policy iteration presented yet more procedural change to planning. Moreover, the centrepiece Statements of Community Involvement that were conceived as a means to help ‘frontload’ participation proved to contain little more than vague undertakings about consultation on plans and development proposals and which were tokenised by local authorities (see Chandler, 2001; Raco et al, 2006). It is interesting to note that other proposals contained in the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill actually included elements of reform which would have further diminished opportunities for public challenge (see Cowell and Owens, 2006); thus highlighting the rather artful attitude that governments have adopted towards participation in planning. A form of ‘localism’ has been packaged and presented since 2010 in England as ‘empowering’ communities to ‘take control’. Many are critical and regard this, and the government’s centrepiece of neighbourhood planning, as another constituent element of the neoliberal tools and features being created to choreograph planners and the public (Sager, 2011; 2018; Clarke and Cochrane, 2013; Corbett and Walker, 2013; Newman, 2014; Baines et al, 2014). Wider factors, including streamlining of the planning system, austerity cuts which reduce public-sector capacity, privatisation and a variety of

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performance management measures are implicated and have been deployed as part of a longer trend in reorienting planning towards a neoliberalised system (see Sager, 2011). This perspective has informed our view about reaching back and combining elements that have been discussed and attempted over time and this appears to be a re-emerging debate (see Doussard, 2015; Benner and Pastor, 2015; Sager, 2016). Indeed, if (neo-)advocacy planning forms are to be embraced there needs to be a recognition that the current situation is not tenable and is producing unsustainable outcomes. The latter section of the book discusses this as a provocation in order to rejuvenate the debate over how to best embed pluralistic engagement in planning practice. This consideration contributes to the debate about where Planning Aid and similar or kindred organisations or groups, could or should feature in the landscape of such a neoadvocacy planning. However, this still elides what is actually involved on a week by week basis; what is it that communities need to learn? And what specifically is involved in terms of the planning sphere? Clearly the bureaucratic procedures and associated boundary rules form one element of this, including how to negotiate the system on its own terms, and how plans are formulated over time. How to assist citizen-planners in collecting and presenting data to good effect in order to highlight issues and arguments is clearly a useful aspect to reflect upon. The relationships involved in planning activity necessitate a notable soft skills aspect where the neo-advocacy skills applied in working alongside a community need to involve developing support and understanding of the way that other interests operate – notably the development industry. A further element is where the crossover between insider roles and outsider roles is manifested and managed. The question of what to do and how to organise the process when other interests are discernibly manipulative and set against community views is still moot and unresolved by collaborative planning theory. Thus, the specific details of the above items may not have been clearly articulated over time in the Planning Aid case, nor have the conditions of operation been present to sustain the guiding ethos; and central

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priorities can distract when such operational issues arise. In the final chapters we set out our thoughts regarding the design and operation of neo-advocacy in reflecting on lessons learned from the practical experience of Planning Aid in England since its inception. In Chapters Five and Six we return to consider the details of the neo-advocacy offer that we envisage.

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FOUR Advocacy and Planning Aid in England

We now discuss the development and aims of Planning Aid and its early exponents. We highlight the organisation’s role (past and present) and suggest how that work remains relevant in the contemporary planning and development environment. While we argue that new and established forms and combinations of advocacy planning are needed, there is a consistent theme throughout the history of Planning Aid (as reviewed below) relating to the unease with which the planning polity has viewed advocacy – even in its more mediatory or collaborative forms. Spaces which encourage agonistic exchange are likely to face a degree of resistance from other interests as the status quo is being challenged. Institutional arrangements which destabilise a dominant urban politics can also be regarded with suspicion; particularly where time and other resources are claimed to be scarce on a practical level, and where established interest positions and assumptions are likely to come under increased scrutiny. This reflects how urban planning remains ‘a crucial site of political struggle’ (McCann, 2001: 207) and where questions of social, economic and environmental concern are confronted locally.

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The political and institutional context in which Planning Aid has operated highlights the practical but fundamental issues that have dogged ‘classic’ and ‘activist’ advocacy in the UK given the way that the role and purpose of planning has been reshaped. As a product of such change ‘other better-endowed groups are already busy with advocates of their own’ (Friedmann, 1987: 300). For example, this could be private sector agents lobbying on behalf of those who can afford their services. Indeed since Friedmann’s observation was made 30 years ago, the extent and proficiency of such private advocacy has developed considerably (Parker, et al, 2014; Parker et al, 2018). This is one factor that supports our view that effective advocacy for community-based interests is warranted. The need for neo-advocacy is discussed in more detail below and rejoined in Chapter Five.

Creating an advocacy planning in England (1971–86) The unease felt by the public about the process and outcomes of modern planning had not been ignored by the planning profession but action taken to address it had generally been muted (as discussed in Chapters Two and Three). However, a segment of planning professionals, concerned with the inequitable outcomes of modern planning (with which they felt somehow complicit), wanted to support, inform and empower those disenfranchised by the operation of the system in England. The outcome was the establishment of ‘Planning Aid’ (Table 4.1). Planning Aid in England was championed by professional planners (see RTPI, 2013; Curtis and Edwards, 1980) and their agitation for a reaction to the apparent inequities in the existing system provoked a response. As early as 1971 the then Royal Town Planning Institute president Jim Amos formally called for the establishment of a ‘planning aid’ service in England (Amos, 1971). However, it was the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) who established the beginnings of such a service in 1973. This was based in London (RTPI, 2013; Hardy, 1991; TCPA, 1974) but deployed a roving approach to aid different areas as their time and resource allowed. Indeed, this was set

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up on an ‘experimental basis…to make available a free independent source of planning advice’ (Curtis and Edwards, 1980: v–vi) and was operated by a small professional staff. Table 4.1: Steps in the Planning Aid timeline 1971

RTPI discuss need for Planning Aid service

1973

Planning Aid service set up via the Town and Country Planning Association

1976

West Midlands Planning Aid mooted

1978

Planning Aid set up in Scotland

1978

South Wales Planning Aid commences

1983

Planning Aid for London set up

1986

Funding for TCPA service cut

1999

National Planning Aid manager for England appointed

2005

Planning Aid England receives government funds to lead on planning education

2010

Planning Aid England/London enrolled to support neighbourhood planning activity

Note: For a more detailed chronology, see: www.rtpi.org.uk/planning-aid/what-we-do/ our-history/

From the organisation’s beginnings in London, a number of satellite bases of operation began to establish themselves as particular issues were being recognised as in need of attention. The proponents of Planning Aid in England in the early 1970s set themselves a lofty set of transformative aims, ostensibly to empower those who lacked the means to participate effectively in shaping their own environment, and implicitly to contest rational top-down planning processes. The early Planning Aid groups operated with self-determined agendas prompted by advocacy theory and were operated as circumstance and resources dictated. The early years of Planning Aid saw most activity in London and the South East of England, with various English regions including the West Midlands (1976), and Wales and Scotland (1978) subsequently establishing separate Planning Aid services, with London retaining a service apart from the latterly RTPI-led Planning Aid England (see

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Evans and Gardiner, 1985). Northern Ireland also operated a service between 2000 and 2004 and reorganisation of local government and the planning system there a few years later acted as a prompt for calls to re-establish a similar service (see Peel, 2013). A feature of the Planning Aid project was that a small professional staff and cadre of volunteers sought to provide assistance freely to those without the means to marshal their own interest effectively. This attempted to assert a new advocacy role for planners in the UK and yet Curtis and Edwards (1980: 3) highlight that in the first decade of Planning Aid’s existence there was no refined understanding or clear aim, except that it was ‘concerned with enabling the public to have greater influence over planning decisions’. Subsequently the stated aims of Planning Aid England (PAE) were expressed in their mission statement: ‘Planning Aid England offers planning advice and support to individuals and communities. We believe everyone should have the opportunity to get involved in planning their local area and provide people with the knowledge and tools to achieve this’ (RTPI and Planning Aid England, 2015). The aims expressed by Planning Aid Scotland (PAS) are similarly open: ‘Impartiality is key to our ability to deliver our services. We do not advocate for or against plans or proposals, rather we enable people to become involved in plans for their local community from the earliest opportunity’ (PAS, 2017). A series of sympathetic critiques of Planning Aid emerged as early as 1980 (Curtis and Edwards, 1980; Bidwell and Edgar, 1982; Evans and Gardiner, 1985; Thomas, 1992; Allmendinger, 2004) and highlighted obstacles to the expansion or consolidation of Planning Aid. Curtis and Edwards (1980: vi) stated, in what was the first review of Planning Aid, that the early service had found it challenging to reach its intended beneficiaries: ‘the users of the service have not been those for whom it was designed, and whom, we agree, should receive the greatest priority’. This early warning indicated how such a service, unless targeted effectively, could be undermined. Other published work on Planning Aid includes overviews of operational practices across the UK (Mordey, 1987; see also Pemberton et al,

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2015); analysis from the perspective of volunteers and their rationales (Thomas, 1992); the actual impact of Planning Aid on communities; and the possible masking of deeper faults and biases in the planning system (Allmendinger, 2004; 2009). In Hardy’s (1991) work there is some discussion of specific case studies. More recently, research has explored how Planning Aid functioned and who it reached during the first terms of the New Labour era (1997–2005) (see Brownill and Carpenter, 2006; 2007a; Carpenter and Brownill, 2008), and latterly, a reflection on the period 2010–15 (Parker and Street, 2017). The longevity of Planning Aid has seen a range of different types of support activity offered, and meant that the name or brand has become widely recognised as a feature of planning practice in the UK. Prior accounts of Planning Aid by Bidwell and Edgar (1982), refined by Thomas (1992) and later by Peel (2013), identified several roles for Planning Aid which map across, in some measure, to Peattie’s assessment of advocacy functions. These were to provide advice, to fulfil a responsibility as public educators, to act as direct advocates and to perform a more fundamental community development role. It may be argued that the last two roles are the most important for transformative effect but they have actually tended to form the minority part of Planning Aid activity over time. Instead it is the advice and education roles that have become more dominant (Curtis and Edwards, 1980: 3; Thomas, 1992; Brownill and Carpenter, 2006). Throughout the organisation’s history in England (and across the UK), funding has been an issue and has both frustrated and oriented activities. Moreover, the political sensitivities of advocacy activity proved a challenge – both in ensuring funding but also in maintaining staff and volunteer commitment, as we go on to explain. By the late 1970s, Planning Aid in England, through the TCPA unit and nascent groups across England, had become an agent for advocacy in one-off planning disputes, as well as by offering an education service with volunteers working directly with community groups and individuals. The argument made at that time was that such activity would highlight whether and how the imbalances of access to planning processes could be addressed. PAE activity was supported by a

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small staff team and by 1979 central government were taking an active interest in how such services might be further supported and extended. The TCPA received some modest funding from central government to run the service in the mid-1970s. The model appeared to have the potential to provoke a wider participation in local planning, but there were recognised challenges (Curtis and Edwards, 1980). While some individual cases that Planning Aid volunteers and staff have pursued in the past are notable for their activist credentials, for example, the case of the Divis Flats in Belfast and Tolmers Square, London (see Hardy, 1991); these appear to be somewhat exceptional and were stymied by funding constraints and resource conditions. The TCPA Planning Aid unit was effectively dismantled by the withdrawal of government funding in the mid-1980s (Hardy, 1991) and the activist work cited above may well have accounted for this, alongside a wider process of public funding retrenchment seen under the Thatcher governments (1979–90). Despite such setbacks, Planning Aid expanded and diversified in the following decades to form the mainstay of an institutionalised advocacy offer, and, in effect, it became the default response of the profession to concerns about gaps in participation. However, it should be noted that individuals and local action groups have tried to challenge the planning system by applying ideas and tactics expressed in advocacy theory in an ad hoc way including activist/radical strands of advocacy planning (see Hardy, 1991; Friedmann, 2011). Such ideas have been a persistent influence on community activists. The uneven and often conditional support and funding for Planning Aid has influenced a range of cultures and operating conditions for the various Planning Aid organisations across the UK. They have developed slightly different structures and staff/volunteer mixes which has also shaped their operation and focus over time (see also Peel, 2013; Pemberton et al, 2015). Their activity has embraced ‘softer’ inputs, including the facilitation of community visioning and ‘planning for real’-type exercises. There is little evidence to suggest that they have be able to provide a comprehensive service, or effectively challenge developers or local authorities in more than a handful of instances.

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Planning Aid has developed a reputation for offering support and advice to the public and the several manifestations of Planning Aid in the UK enjoy widespread support in principle. While the skills and experience of volunteers and staff have been honed, and few would claim that Planning Aid cannot deliver positive outcomes, it is arguable whether the service in England has actually been able to achieve a great deal. Despite any feeling that it is morally appropriate for a Planning Aid service to exist, the advocacy planning offer has not been stabilised or embedded. Given the close relationship between central government funding and PAE agendas pursued over time, it is clear that PAE has sought to mutually align with government objectives. Planning Aid Scotland has aligned itself in a similar way. This has made it more challenging still to deploy advocacy in the activist and radical formulations featured in Peattie’s (1968; 1978) typology. Moreover, it has left a rather limited or ephemeral legacy in which much of the Planning Aid work has been the type of activity that many consultancies could deliver (see, for example, Renaisi, 2017) if funds were available.

Planning Aid England and New Labour The New Labour governments (1997–2010) claimed to recognise deficiencies in previous attempts to involve the public in planning. In reforming the planning system in their second and third terms in power (2001–10), they sought to widen and organise participation. The 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act featured the ‘frontloading’ of community involvement in plan-making (ODPM, 2004: 10; Doak and Parker, 2005), as mentioned in Chapter Three. Government saw Planning Aid as a potential partner in helping to realise their intent and made explicit mention of the service in heralding their reforms. It may be too strong a claim that Labour intended to institutionalise advocacy, but they did bring about a period of stability for the service and were able to entertain a modest version of the ‘classic’ model of advocacy planning as part of Planning Aid’s sanctioned activity under the terms of the funding they made available.

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The partner ing arrangements reached between the New Labour governments and Planning Aid England came closest to institutionalising Planning Aid and allowed some scope for casework advocacy, whereby planners work alongside communities, to (for example) develop alternative options to proposed developments in response to community concerns. In practice, much of the activity encouraged by government fell into the ‘advice’ and ‘education’ categories and involved staff and volunteers in promoting planning and informing people about the system and how they could be involved in it (compare Figure 2.2). There was also less emphasis on whom should be the recipients of Planning Aid’s support, although the 2004 prospectus on community involvement produced by government (see Chapter Three), appeared to be aimed at addressing the engagement of previously excluded groups. As a result, Planning Aid England was funded by central government between 2005 and 2010 to deliver a programme of outreach and education. This funding enabled the organisation to expand both the reach of its activities and increase its staffing levels. The period saw the more widespread use of means such as roadshows, community events and school visits to engage communities in planning. Another significant change was the development of a large cadre of volunteers during the 2000s. By 2012, the number of registered volunteer planners associated with Planning Aid England stood at around 900, led by a cadre of staff which peaked at around 60 people in the mid-2000s. Difficulties in reaching target groups and mobilising and sustaining activity has been a long-term issue for Planning Aid. Brownill and Carpenter (2006; 2007b) claimed that this was the case even when levels of funding for Planning Aid were significant and the service was extended across the whole of England. They highlighted how the stability of Planning Aid in England had been reliant on government grants and project funding, and the drive to target particular groups and issues had faltered. A concern for many staff and volunteers was connected to both policy and operational ‘drift’ from Planning Aid’s advocacy planning roots and aspirations to empower marginalised communities.

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In interviews we conducted with Planning Aid volunteers and staff, it was clear that reaching deprived communities with their knowledge was particularly motivating for them: [H]elping disadvantaged communities is a key theme in engaging volunteers, when you talk to people [volunteers] they say actually that’s why they come into the game in the first place; because they want to make a difference. (PAE volunteer) I think the purpose of Planning Aid is really to support those that can’t get support elsewhere…it did drift, certainly when I was involved, into helping groups that could afford to help themselves. If you think about the roots of Planning Aid…the Advocacy Planning, that’s very important. (PAE volunteer) A significant volunteer role under the aegis of Planning Aid was to work with individuals or groups on a pro bono basis, typically on objections to planning applications. In the period 2010 and 2015 the emphasis shifted to support neighbourhood planning groups (see Parker and Salter, 2017). While the staff role in supporting and maintaining the volunteer force is a critical one, the Planning Aid staff who were interviewed stressed that many of the volunteers did not regularly involve themselves in casework. This was due to a lack of will, resource and a minority of volunteers willing to take on the potentially taxing work involved. Internal review work, undertaken to understand the preferences of volunteers, conducted in 2013 showed that some of the more challenging aspects of PAE’s scope were seen as daunting for many volunteers. Casework appealed in principle but was seen as challenging in practice due to its open-ended nature and the likely conflicts that might arise where help was needed (for example, volunteers being drawn into protracted and possibly confrontational argument with other parties), such concerns appear in line with Neuman’s (2000) point about the disposition of many planners. This sets up a question about whether volunteers alone can realistically be expected to pursue

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cases that may be lengthy and conflictual, unless there is substantial support and task sharing. Writing just after the first funding agreement between Planning Aid England and the New Labour government had been concluded in 2003, Allmendinger (2004: 270) claimed that ‘what Planning Aid does is postpone crises in and challenges to…planning…by helping assure those dissatisfied or excluded from the system that they eventually had a “voice” or a “fair say”’. In essence this perspective cast doubt on the impact of the service and whether it could actually reform planning process and outcome in the spirit of the early advocacy planning movement. This concern recurred in our research discussing Planning Aid with volunteers and staff. Moreover, the assumption made by Allmendinger (2004), that Planning Aid was even performing this ‘assurance’ role, let alone more meaningfully supporting those dissatisfied or excluded, is not actually sustained by the evidence.

Localism and neighbourhood planning: advocacy denied? In Chapter Two we outlined the basis and profile of neighbourhood planning to help shed light on how collaborative forms that are presented as empowering can become limiting. In essence, these formulations are in danger of being taken up only by those communities with the resources and support to do so. Since 2010, the way that governments have sought to address issues of lack of engagement in planning has been to pursue a particular form of localism that involves a degree of devolution, including a rescaling of planning. Their prescription was to remove formal strategic planning at the regional level and to ‘unleash’ neighbourhoods to prepare their own plans. Underpinning this approach was the belief that the population wanted and, moreover, were able to do this. There was also an implicit assumption that neighbourhoods were similarly equipped to take up the community rights on offer: ‘Instead of local people being told what to do, the Government thinks that local communities should have genuine opportunities to influence the future of the places where

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they live. The Localism Act introduces a new right for communities to draw up a neighbourhood plan’ (DCLG, 2011: 12). The foreword to the National Planning Policy Framework (DCLG, 2012) for England also linked the reform of former planning structures with the inclusionary potential of neighbourhood planning: ‘planning has tended to exclude, rather than to include, people and communities. In part, this has been a result of targets being imposed, and decisions taken, by bodies remote from them. Dismantling the unaccountable regional apparatus and introducing neighbourhood planning addresses this’ (DCLG, 2012: i). Thus, the promise was that neighbourhood planning would open up planning and allow communities to take a lead at the very local scale. A duty to support communities in their efforts was placed on local authorities and as such neighbourhood planning appeared in the English planning environment as a form of co-produced planning – at least as a form of co-management – where communities were partnered with local authorities and consultants to produce neighbourhood land-use plans (see Parker et al, 2015; 2017). The way that neighbourhood planning has emerged and been developed has been subject to widespread debate in the academic literature. Many have been critical and presented it as something of a missed opportunity. For our purposes there are several points that are relevant here. The first is the way that it has been supported, including the role of Planning Aid. The second is the basis and limits placed on communities, and the third is the apparent lack of understanding of the politics and antagonisms likely to envelope neighbourhood planning. This underscores the lack of understanding of community diversity and predictable inertias. All of these factors act to highlight how more activist forms of engagement and advocacy have largely been managed out of the system, or are not recognised as being legitimate, or even necessary. Box 4.1 provides a cameo of the inputs Planning Aid England was providing to some neighbourhood planning groups in the period 2010–15.

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Box 4.1: Planning Aid and Neighbourhood Plan support Balsall Heath, Birmingham, Neighbourhood Development Plan • • • •

Date commenced: April 2011 (frontrunner community) Date completed: passed referendum October 2015 Population of the neighbourhood: 15,000 IMD ranking category: 5th quintile (most deprived)

Planning Aid England provided continuing professional support over a sustained period to a Neighbourhood Forum in a poor, inner-city area. They provided support in the preparation of a Neighbourhood Development Plan and the input of independent professional planning expertise, which would have been unavailable from the Local Planning Authority which made a critical difference. The community activists who were involved viewed Planning Aid’s participaton as critical and it was considered most likely that the process would have floundered without them: ‘We consulted Planning Aid England from an early stage in the process of writing the Neighbourhood Plan, and they were invaluable, particularly in liaising with the City Council planning officers, and in drafting and revising the policies in the Plan. We could not have done it without their expertise’ (Balsall Heath Neighbourhood Forum, 2015 cited in Parker and Street, 2015b). Planning Aid deployed professional knowledge and understanding to help guide the Neighbourhood Forum towards a set of proposals which were deliverable and met the demands of central government, particularly regarding Plan ‘viability’. The proposals (which included two major development sites) required the marshalling of appropriate supporting evidence and justification, involving extensive consultation with landowners, infrastructure providers and other interested parties. The Planning Authority was also supportive in working together with Planning Aid England and the Neighbourhood Forum to highlight the various legal requirements, especially the numerous stages at which further consultation needed to be undertaken. The whole process took an extended period of time and local interest waned, especially with the numerous consultation stages. The support of Planning Aid England was critical in maintaining community involvement and momentum. See: www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/download/264/balsall_heath_ neighbourhood_development_plan

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The agenda of government since 2010 in respect to planning education and participation has purported to involve a radical new empowerment drive through the localism agenda and, specifically, neighbourhood planning. The approach was targeted towards producing Neighbourhood Plans rather than wider enablement and capacity building in communities regarding their substantive issues and how they might address them. Support enrolled from agencies such as Planning Aid England and Planning Aid London (see Parker, 2012 and Box 4.1) was limited to helping communities learn how to navigate the process, with an emphasis on completing the plan, rather than on how it was done or what voices and content were involved or expressed. This connects to the second issue regarding the conditions placed on the participants, which bounded them within a regulatory process and tended to limit innovation or challenge (Parker et al, 2017; Gunn et al, 2015). These elements illustrate a lack of understanding or will (or both) regarding the diversity and complexity of planning generally and of participation in planning in particular. In parallel, campaigning groups such as Just Space operating in London (see Taylor and Edwards, 2016) have emerged and their modality bears some resemblance to activist advocacy forms, but these seem exceptional and tend to prove a rule about the limited reach of such groups (and indeed of Planning Aid itself), as well as indicating a latent demand for help. Other not-for-profits, for example bodies such as Seeds for Change (www.seedsforchange.org.uk/), have emerged and reflect a fragmentary offer for advocacy ‘clients’. As such they may be regarded as laudable but they are unlikely to create significant policy disruption or ‘move the centre’ of planning on their own (Krumholz, 1994). Moreover, it is clearly not sufficient to rely on uncoordinated and unsupported local action groups to maintain their own responses alone if progressive and pluralistic planning forms are desired as a normative good. Some encouraging efforts have also emerged to try and establish norms of operation that promote inclusive and equitable decision-making; but again, these are localised, for example, the Newcastle ‘Fairness Commission’ work (see Stanley, 2016).

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Planning Aid England 2010–16 The shift in approach and emphasis by the UK government, elected in 2010, towards the localism agenda accompanied a change in funding arrangements and a wider period of austerity in public spending. Planning Aid England’s funding was targeted and by 2011 they had been almost entirely cut from government funding to perform the wider education and advice roles (as discussed above). Instead governmental attention was directed towards neighbourhood planning. Faced with little alternative, Planning Aid bid for, and were successful in securing, government funding offered to agencies willing to assist groups who came forward to take up neighbourhood planning. The period revealed a number of internal tensions. Box 4.2 highlights the experience of the West Midlands region, from where the example shown in Box 4.1 is also derived. These examples highlight the attitudes and responses of intermediary planners and activists to the shift of activity in this period and on how Planning Aid has changed over time. Box 4.2: Planning Aid in transition West Midlands Region and Planning Aid Planning Aid had been mooted as early as 1976 in the West Midlands, with a service being formally offered by 1978 (RTPI, 2013; Curtis and Edwards, 1980: 54), and there has been a volunteer group delivering support to communities with planning issues across the region ever since – although the administrative arrangements have changed over time. The West Midlands region is broadly representative of England as a whole with around 10 per cent of the population of England located there and spread across a diverse array of 30 local authorities. By 2011 25 per cent (1.3 million) of the region’s population were in households with incomes below the poverty threshold, one of the highest percentages of all English regions. At its high point during the New Labour period the West Midlands had a dedicated team of Planning Aid staff. By 2011 the support for wider education and advice activity made possible under New Labour had been cut by the incoming government. This resulted in an organisational shake-up and PAE staffing in the West Midlands region was reduced to one person, plus a share in the centralised telephone advice service operating from London. The minimal level of core funding made available from the RTPI (around £140,000 per annum in 2012–15 for England as a whole)

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ADVOCACY AND PLANNING AID IN ENGLAND meant that PAE could not realistically deliver the kind of outcomes hoped for in the past, and given there were few resources available for support, training, orchestration and direction, this also affected the way that volunteers could be mobilised in the region. The feeling of the staff and volunteers interviewed was that priority groups were being neglected and that neighbourhood planning had largely supplanted other activity by 2012.

PAE staff interviewees acknowledged that the lack of Planning Aid staff meant that regional knowledge and expertise was also lost and that opportunities for Planning Aid to perform other useful work in the regions were not being identified or pursued. Overall, PAE operated its service on a reactive model, responding to the requests of those who approached the service and then largely to give advice, or in the latter period primarily to support neighbourhood planning: while PAE has wanted to support those in most need during my time working here, other activity has taken precedence, largely because of funding arrangements and prevailing conditions. It has meant that the advice and casework service that remained in the period 2011–2015 was reactive and many of those making use of it probably could have sought advice or support elsewhere – either from the local planning authority or from a consultant. (PAE staff member) Work with the most deprived or other minority groups in society has proved challenging and there is little evidence about how the activity of PAE has addressed this in the past 20 years or so. In the West Midlands there were only five casework instances taken up in 2014–15 and findings reported in 2007 also suggested that Planning Aid England had been responding largely to people who already had some knowledge of the planning system, and only a relatively few of those were from disadvantaged groups: even with the sustained efforts [that] the organisation’s community planners are putting in to increase participation,

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barriers still exist…only a small percentage of community groups worked with were from black and ethnic minority groups. Similarly a large number of telephone callers to the Planning Aid information lines did not meet Planning Aid’s criteria for assistance, which exclude those who can afford to pay for professional support. (Brownill and Carpenter, 2007a: 630) Thus, if these challenges were apparent, the scope to address them was much reduced by 2011–12. Those active in Planning Aid England felt a tension between the instrumental ‘reality’ of needing to find funds on the one hand, and, on the other, protecting the aims and integrity of the organisation which had motivated them to get involved: I think that over the last few years, maybe the last five to ten years, Planning Aid has got lost. I think it has lost its mission and I think that hasn’t helped matters. I think there is huge confusion about the role of volunteers…Until we get a clear vision as to what we do, only then we can start talking about what volunteers do to help deliver that. For various understandable reasons there has been a bit of mission drift. (Former PAE staff member) Many of the concerns expressed by interviewees about the current and future orientation of Planning Aid in England related to the recent emphasis on neighbourhood planning. By 2015, Planning Aid England had supported 274 neighbourhood planning groups (with 40 of those located in the West Midlands). This took up considerable volunteer time working alongside the small number of paid staff involved in supporting those neighbourhoods. It emerged that for Planning Aid volunteers and staff this was not seen as ‘true’ to the historic mission. This was made more obvious given that so many early neighbourhood plans had been initiated by more affluent communities (see Gunn et al, 2015; Parker and Salter, 2017): I think the key thing is that Planning Aid needs to get back to dealing with people where there is a need…rather than focusing

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on areas like neighbourhood planning where there is money around…there is a need to get back to a variety of activities that focus on engaging people in all aspects of planning. (PAE volunteer) [T]he challenges were really twofold. The first was the demands of neighbourhood planning which took up almost all of the staff time and attention between 2011–2015. This meant that most volunteer activity reflected that priority. Some volunteers were not too happy about this and wanted to see a rebalancing [of activity] to assist those who needed planning support most. (PAE staff member) The challenge of focus was apparent: returning to what several volunteers identified as Planning Aid’s ‘core mission’ was rendered difficult, largely due to funding. In interview a senior employee of Planning Aid England reflected that the work of PAE in the period 2011 to 2015 rested predominately on neighbourhood planning because this was where the funding was: We could only maintain a very limited operation beyond this due to the resources and capacity available. There was little space to challenge developers or local authorities on their actions or to look for cases or issues to pursue proactively. (PAE staff member) This brings into view the second challenge; relating to funding and a nervousness on the part of local authorities and consultancies about the historic aims of Planning Aid. Concerns over possible issues of conflict of interest have also persisted. For example, questions may be raised if professional planners were to support the organisation financially, or those employed by local planning authorities and consultants were to volunteer for Planning Aid. Securing stable and adequate funding is a fundamental issue for any support organisation, let alone one that overtly aspires to enable advocacy planning. Indeed, this situation had arisen before in the 1980s when the TCPA lost its funding for Planning

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Aid. Finding appropriate and stable funding for Planning Aid has been a consistent issue across past reviews of Planning Aid ever since, as underscored by Peel (2013: 2): ‘it is important not to underestimate the costs involved in managing and sustaining a volunteer [planning] force. There is a need, for example, to recruit, coordinate, and support volunteers; and generally to promote and manage such a service in a professional way.’ Funding is a recognised issue in the wider not-for-profit sector, where ‘mission’ is often seen to be in tension with organisational effectiveness and trade-offs between mission and organisational survival are common (Frumkin and Andre-Clark, 2000). This has rarely been given much attention in the advocacy planning literature, with Corey’s (1972) study of advocacy planning an exception. Clearly the stability and ability to train and otherwise support communities is a pre-conditional element of successful neo-advocacy. Funding conditions and operating constraints associated with available funding are critical to the way organisations such as Planning Aid flourish or orient themselves. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the funding in the form of grants or project funds received by Planning Aid England since 2003, was shaped by governmental policy agendas.

Where does this leave Planning Aid? As an RTPI-endorsed activity, the delivery of Planning Aid may be read as reflective of the standards and state of the profession more widely – certainly in terms of participation. The quality of the service, even if it is provided on a voluntary basis, is critical to the wider standing of the statutory land use planning system and how effectively, efficiently and equitably it is perceived to operate. This is because how interests are accounted for is a proxy measure for the social legitimacy of the planning system. Indeed, this point has provoked a renewed attention towards the meaning and application of public interest in planning; echoing Davidoff’s concerns expressed in the 1960s (see Tait, 2016; Lennon, 2016; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012) and now posed in the light of a weakened system oriented towards neoliberal agendas.

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Thus, what we can discern from the experience of Planning Aid above is that the tasks involved are multiple and challenging and bodies seeking to address the imbalances in the planning system need a stable footing and degree of independence from central and local government. In order to effectively contribute to enabling public interest to be debated, resourcing is critical to sustain an effective service. Planning Aid’s experience indicates how such a basic concern has fundamental repercussions for progressive planning. Neo-advocacy in planning is also likely to struggle without funding that is available without constraints or conditions attached. It needs to be able to support and enable agonistic exchange – funders may well recoil from this positioning. Thus, the case for neo-advocacy needs to be outlined in practical terms too. As we detail here, the design and operation of neo-advocacy planning sits very much within the post-collaborative paradigm involving a more fluid and multi-strand approach to support, education and advocacy with communities.

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FIVE Neo-advocacy and contemporary issues in progressive planning

The advocacy model, in variants of the classic and activist strands, was initially criticised because of the possible disempowering effect of others speaking on behalf of marginalised groups. There was also a perceived danger of agendas being warped by advocates to suit themselves. Yet our view is that advocacy, understood as acting across the categories identified by Peattie (1978), can be rehabilitated and reformulated. It is clear that in some circumstances the need for another to amplify views on behalf of marginalised groups is made necessary by circumstance. However, the employment of this practice has been somewhat supplanted by other forms of engagement; in a sense the alternatives have supplanted rather than complemented advocacy. The debate over participation in planning and the tensions between insider/outsider planning activity is still a live one; as indicated in the review of Planning Aid presented here, and given the changing operating environment of planning in the UK. Faced with decades of politicians’ claiming to want to see more active citizenship and to empower communities, the introduction of neighbourhood planning in England seemed a real opportunity for neighbourhoods to take some control of their ‘own’ area. Yet uptake has been somewhat

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dominated by those in more affluent areas. Meanwhile most local authorities have lacked the will, motivation or resources (or all three) to do more than the minimum in terms of community engagement in the process of Neighbourhood Plan preparation, where the regulatory requirements require that ‘a local planning authority must give such advice or assistance to qualifying bodies as, in all the circumstances, they consider appropriate’ (Localism Act 2011: s61.3(1)). However, the relevant stipulations applicable to participation in local plan-making in England are open to interpretation: Early and meaningful engagement and collaboration with neighbourhoods, local organisations and businesses is essential. A wide section of the community should be proactively engaged, so that Local Plans, as far as possible, reflect a collective vision and a set of agreed priorities for the sustainable development of the area. (DCLG, 2012: para 155) While there are interesting lessons being learned about localism and participation, the debate over collaborative or co-productivist participation, as opposed to outright (ant)agonistic challenge, and how to integrate community views and knowledge continues. Wellintentioned but unresolved conflict is rather wasteful at one end of a spectrum, while ‘going through the motions’ of consultation or participatory processes that yield little clearly lacks merit too. This is a particularly acute issue in areas where large segments of the resident population take little or no part in thinking about, engaging with or ‘owning’ the policies and change taking place around them. In these instances, neither the dilatory forms of participation typically offered, or agonistic engagement intended to disrupt existing policy processes or influence other change, are likely to yield results. It is apparent that the adjustment of planning processes and institutional design are important factors in enabling inclusive engagement and yet such modifications have proved challenging. Even if such system changes are forthcoming we are still left with questions about how to ensure that the widest range of interests are

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enabled, voiced and involved. Here we set out what we envisage for a neo-advocacy model for participation that may assist in achieving such aims. These steps can at least act to highlight the conditions required in support of this ambition. Of course, this cannot be the only formulation or element of engagement in planning but it is important, perhaps particularly so in urban areas and disadvantaged neighbourhoods, where change is needed or being actively considered, and in areas where a diversity of interests and groups are present. In reality this covers many areas of any given country. It also therefore means prioritising or targeting particular areas and communities that most need support and focusing on those who are unable or unlikely to be involved. This effort should be pro-active and keep in sight issues that would otherwise be marginalised. Our experience of the British planning system environment is that advocacy did gain some significant traction in the 1970s but subsequent adoption of advocacy forms were not as conceived by Davidoff and others almost two generations ago. The shift towards democratisation in the face of state intervention was only partially achieved by the 1980s. At this time, a new challenge relating to the strengthening of property interests emerged; this continues to be a factor in the democratic deficit evident in planning. The relative strengthening of property interests has brought with it ‘advocacy for the powerful’ which acts to highlight how malleable planning systems can be. Instead advocacy is now manifest on behalf of those who can afford it – quite the reverse of the advocacy championed over a generation ago. The starkest example in the mainstream planning system occurs where local plans and policies are shaped, prepared and contested and in particular where individual schemes are conceived and promoted via the use of planning consultancies as private advocates. This also shows how, without equal (and opposing) arguments and evidence, it is somewhat inevitable that the ‘centre has shifted’ although a reverse of the shift that Krumholz (1994) hoped to see. The main role for many of these private sector firms is to lobby, gain concessions in the system and to attain planning permissions – often playing right up against and across public policy objectives (see

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Christophers, 2014; Pierre, 1999; Raco et al, 2016). It is in these arenas where the rise of private sector planning agents who service the development industry, is most apparent. Given that private interests brief and pay agents as ‘advocates’, a disparity is obvious – one that was not present in the 1960s where the main issue was intransigent state action. Simultaneously a relative weakening of public sector planning in terms of resources, policy continuity and the plan-led system of decision-making is further unbalancing the system. In this context the weight of neoliberal presumptions and tools circulated in the past few decades have borne down on participation and acted to narrow it. This situation indicates that even educated, and well-connected groups or clients need planning advice and support – let alone more marginalised and resource-limited groups.

Neo-advocacy: what does it look and feel like? While the principle of advocacy is not entirely demolished by the disempowerment argument discussed earlier it is desirable that communities should be able to formulate and express views and interest positions with or without the aid of others as necessary, or as part of genuinely collaborative processes. How such necessity is determined remains moot but there is a strong case for active engagement, information and offers of support to be present in the first place. Clearly there is a responsibility to make the case for neo-advocacy in more detail and to do this effectively the roles of planners, the activities implied, the conditions required and the institutional set-up and support involved all need to be held up for discussion. The reflection drawn from the preceding chapters is that neo-advocacy will need to be well organised and facilitated. The need therefore for a support organisation seems compelling. But what does neo-advocacy involve and what will an agency leading on such activity do? While we feel the general case is made already, here we seek to add some further framing to the formulation of a renewed and wider role for advocacy tools and modes in planning. The primary role of neo-advocacy remains to support in a variety of ways communities

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who cannot mobilise effectively for themselves, and as such the role(s) of the neo-advocate must be fluid but with a clear mission. There are different degrees of support and types of input possible from planners and others. We argue for a situation-specific response to be orchestrated. The key is that those who need assistance most can access the appropriate support and that it operates on the level of immediate help in crisis moments, as well as offering support to develop and strengthen community influence over time. This includes a remit both to operate ‘within’ the system but also where necessary ‘outwith’ it. Neo-advocacy support plies the line between enabling antagonistic pressure, informing agonistic exchange and developing a partnership with key interests, with scope, if needed, for partisan advocacy to champion a particular cause if time, need or both necessitate it. Different means of support and specific requirements can be developed jointly and a role for a neo-advocacy agency as broker and project enabler is manifest. Similarly, communication about available ‘packages’ that can be offered or sought out is one aspect that needs attention and is an area that has remained rather underdeveloped in the case of Planning Aid. There are some general good practice aspects to a wider neo-advocacy offer that merit mention here; training and preparation are important, as is good project management and other organisational efficiencies. The range of different situations likely to be faced by communities necessitates a more flexible scenario-based approach beyond identifying key types of input – as indicated in Figure 1.1. Both the potential ‘clients’ or partners, or those offering to help enable neo-advocacy, need a clearer idea of what is to be done and how best to do it. Table 5.1 outlines some of the activity types and stages in planning where elements of neo-advocacy may be applied.

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Table 5.1: How a neo-advocacy agency could facilitate engagement Activity types

Examples

Planning ‘stage’

Training 1: Communities

Capacity building, basics of planning system, Early phases actor motives

Training 2: Volunteers

Community development skills, event facilitation, advocacy aims and types

Early phases

Communication

Explanation of service and benefits; case material

Early phases

Identification of needs and opportunities

Mapping of short and long-term engagements Early and midwith planning for the community; visioning; phases discussion about use of formal planning tools such as neighbourhood planning

Scenario-building

Preparation of alternatives

Mid-phases

Specialist input

Deconstruction of (technical) evidence and arguments

Mid-phases

Advocacy

Speaking on behalf of a community in need; expressing complex arguments in formal settings; development of strategy/tactics

Mid-/late phases

Note: ‘Early’ phase intimates when a plan is being first developed, or site is identified but no proposal is public; ‘Late’ phase refers to latter stages of plan production or where a reaction to a development proposal is needed.

Given the different stages of planning, the highlighting of appropriate type and timing of support is significant. Instances or planning ‘moments’ where neo-advocacy can be an important part of a coproduced planning include key stages of plan preparation, and in the production of alternative plans or policies if necessary, the latter of which corresponds closely with Davidoff’s position. This will require a suite of actions and inputs from neo-advocacy planners performing as intermediaries. This conceptualisation chimes with Sager’s (2016) anticipation of the intermediate activist planner. Thus ‘planning’ expertise in some narrower sense may be needed but increasingly combinations of endogenous skills and aptitudes which are latent in communities are recognised as important. Such resources need to be organised, honed and oriented. A second role of the neo-advocate therefore is to induce and organise activity: acting to enrol and ensure input from citizens. This involvement can be both in terms

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of organising and vocalising but also in ‘back office’ or ‘on the street’ activities, for example, drawing on citizen science experience (Irwin, 1995), community-led planning processes (Parker and Murray, 2012) or wider community organising know-how (Gittell and Vidal, 1998). Different approaches or combinations should be applied as a response to discussion, advice and circumstances in context. This also speaks to the variants of co-production that have been identified by Brandsen and Pestoff (2006) and Watson (2014), that may be appropriate in different situations and which bear different combinations of responsibility, roles and partnering. Overall this represents a more tailored approach to neo-advocacy that recognises the different scenarios, needs and resources likely to feature on a case by case basis. Continued help with Neighbourhood Plans (and other forms of plan at a similar scale) at all stages, particularly in disadvantaged communities, and around the early stages of generating interest and organising engagement and evidence gathering, are legitimate for neoadvocacy inputs. Neighbourhood planning research has incidentally become a learning vehicle for evidencing the difficulties of enabling marginalised interests and disadvantaged communities to participate. This has highlighted the need for neo-advocacy and gives us some further insight about what is required and where it should be directed. For example, in the latter stages of neighbourhood planning effective policy writing was uncovered as a problem for many communities. This presents itself as a role that neo-advocacy teams can assist with (and not only in neighbourhood planning). The interrogation of draft local policies produced by professional planners, which are most likely overseen by local politicians, is also a task in need of scrutiny and challenge. These types of skills and inputs will be best drawn from experienced practitioners who have worked on planning policy development in local authorities or in planning consultancies. This highlights that, other than the type of skills involved, there is need to identify and reflect on the key planning junctures or moments that present themselves as key sites in need of intervention. Early phases of plan preparation are often the most fruitful, when a wider scope and channel for the exchange of issues, needs and evidence remains

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open. This means that communities need to be alerted to, and helped to prepare early for such stages in plan production. Second, how to then continue to press and ensure that points (that are important and well-evidenced) are not sidelined or submerged in later stages of the planning process, and are kept in sight. This is where the neoadvocacy agency and associated advocates can play another useful role: in ensuring that pressure is maintained over time. There is also an ongoing need to help communities respond effectively and constructively to individual development proposals. This is important historically as it is often the point at which communities become aware of proposed change. This is a prime focus for advocacyrelated actions given that many proposals for schemes have a track record of challenging policy requirements, upsetting communities and not actively involving people meaningfully in proposal preparation. There is scope to help groups to input earlier (when schemes are still nascent), as well as in assisting with more reactive challenge in the face of poor quality or otherwise high-handed schemes. This is rendered ever more important when the policy environment and the plan-led system is eroded in favour of market mechanisms that are tending to determine the design, characteristics and other features of development, including levels of affordable housing provided. It also indicates how a prepared and available cadre of people willing and able to assist is critical. It is notable how the skills and understandings of communities have altered over time, with expanded access to information and tools available to aid citizen-planning playing a part in this. Increasingly there are new transferable skills and technologies that can be fruitfully employed by communities and these do not necessarily or even typically rest with professional planners. The use of new media forms as well as other new technologies can be part of an overall toolkit of means to ensure that processes of decision making are made more open and accountable. It is unsurprising that the potentials of web tools, visualisation software, apps and other technological innovations, including social media, have been recognised (see Hanzl, 2007; EvansCowley and Hollander, 2010) and have begun to be applied by citizen-

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planners. Many of these tools can be beneficial in self-produced or jointly assembled data or evidence. Some of these are being applied in neighbourhood planning in England, for example; ‘Common Place’ and ‘Know My Neighbourhood’ (see https://neighbourhood. knowmyarea.org/) tools. The people who hold the relevant skills to make these accessible are identifiable from a wide range of professional backgrounds, often design-related, as well as other IT-intensive industries (for example, programming, gaming, engineering). This may need liaison and training but many skills can be oriented and opportunities arise here by enrolling IT-savvy people to input to the participation process. This does not replace or eliminate a need for technical inputs to community-led planning which require planning expertise and experience and indeed there are concerns that a gap between those able to make use of such tools and data and those who cannot, will sustain ‘digital exclusion’ unless support is present (Longley and Singleton, 2009). This speaks to a wider point that is being increasingly recognised around the impact of a fragmentation of the planning profession and the range of expertise involved in the delivery of key planning tasks (see Parker et al, 2018). This features a diversification of roles and a more complex and difficult to navigate planning system with numerous issues and requirements that can intimidate or otherwise inhibit participation and necessary challenge. This provides an obstacle for many and especially for novices, or those already dealing with other life challenges or burdens typically associated with disadvantaged areas, let alone well-educated, articulate members of the public living in affluent areas. Indeed, this inertia or burden was expressed by many of those involved in the early years of neighbourhood planning. They found the planning system to be hugely challenging and opaque – despite available support and assurances that the process would be ‘light-touch’ (Parker et al, 2015). Other technical knowledges and knowhow can also act to stymie community input, especially when it comes to the kinds of financial arguments that underpin development decisions. Tools such as Development Viability Appraisals (DVA) can be used to justify

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proposals that may conflict with planning policy and can undermine community inputs at a stroke (see Christophers, 2014; Wacher, 2015). Here the contribution of chartered surveyors who can, for example, bring financial appraisal and modelling knowledge as appropriate to the circumstances, appears useful. Indeed, research with users of Planning Aid has indicated that awareness and support around the basis and economic arguments for and against particular development schemes was seen as a useful resource and yet scarce within communities (Parker and Street, 2017). The neo-advocacy organisation pre-supposed here has a number of facilitation roles to maintain and can usefully act as a central point to help marshal and match resources and needs. There is also a task to ensure that volunteers are clear about the need for and utility of inputs and the burdens involved. Thus, questions of how to sustain activity and the terms of engagement within participation episodes is important, as well as wider consideration around how these fit with other methods of collaborative working. We are also arguing for a wider use of non-planners, better use of older, experienced, planning professionals (who often fit the profile of volunteers and may have more time to spare), the use of interlocking volunteer teams to maximise coverage, and the intelligent use of the broad skill-sets needed to navigate and respond to planning issues in the twenty-first century. This should be drawn together by a support organisation with sufficient resources to do this effectively.

Who are the neo-advocates? Establishing this approach and embedding it is likely to raise a number of practical challenges. The issue of who will actually perform neoadvocate roles has not been expressed in any detail in the literature, with early work on advocacy implying that professional planners working in the public sector would take on a ‘public defender’ role (for example, Cloward and Piven, 1970). This is by now a rather limited and somewhat outdated anticipation. While such a role may form part of the work or task on behalf of and with a community it is not the only

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one, being typically where a professional planner is needed to front up a case (as highlighted in Table 5.1), and particularly in circumstances where a rapid reaction to a crisis is needed and a persuasive voice is helpful. Consideration of who and what is involved in this appreciation of neo-advocacy is also prompted by our reflection on the diverse and specialised emergence of a variety of sub-disciplines surrounding and constituting planning and the related built environment professions. As intimated here, there is scant case for a narrow or definitive prescription about the support involved, or, relatedly, the identity and knowledge of the neo-advocate. However, it is important to provide some further detail about the individuals whom we see as forming and constituting a neo-advocacy offer. The idea that volunteers, whether planners or not, can do all of this type of work and alone is unrealistic but there are clearly roles for those who know the system and are willing to share their understandings and the tacit knowledges they have accumulated. The neo-advocacy composite exhibits some clear distinctions from the initial advocacy models in that it recognises community capacity, acts to nurture it and shapes inputs to suit prevailing circumstances and also recognises that individual planners are unlikely to have all the required skills, knowledge or time to provide aid alone. This also implies that in many cases a team of neo-advocates will be enlisted to boost the organic network that the community could (and may be supported to) activate themselves. For us, neo-advocacy is ultimately a shared enterprise with different roles and actors being assembled. This essentially presupposes that non-planners are to be encouraged into neo-advocacy planning roles. Teams comprising local people are desirable and such groupings should strategically draw upon skills and experience from within and beyond the locality (the latter possibly brokered by the neo-advocacy agency); for example, project management and IT know-how as generic transferable skills may be applicable, other specialist inputs can be identified and also drawn into engagement strategies. Environmental science and development viability are two good examples of specialist elements needing expert input.

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Experience in the past indicates that community needs will vary from place to place but also in relation to the type of issue and timing of the planning ‘cycle’. Typically, an understanding of process, or how to form networks will be needed – political skills become important in this respect. Priming communities about threats and opportunities can be a critical element in such neo-advocacy activity. Conversely, carefully agreed input helps communities and ‘external’ organisations to commit to action. With this in mind, there are wide groupings of possible volunteers with relevant skills and experience. For example, the cadre of retired or semi-retired planners (and others) who are knowledgeable and active presents an opportune resource given the growing body of people who are potentially available as life expectancy rises. Making more effective use of this ‘silver generation’ of planners and proto-planners seems to offer a rather rich source for neo-advocacy intermediaries.

Education and participation Of course, how to effect this neo-advocacy orientation rests not only on questions of organisational set-up but also of technique, of pedagogy and the targeting of support. If advocacy, equity planning and collaborative theory all claim a need for education then thinking through how this needs to be pursued is important. A role for a central agency appears logical as a platform to inform local community groups and schools about planning issues. Indeed, Planning Aid (and the RTPI) have continued to promote this, albeit on a limited basis. Supporting more volunteers with the relevant materials and training needed to educate local groups about planning and development issues of relevance to their neighbourhood could be stepped up without huge resource implications. Maintaining easily accessible and understood information is an ongoing requirement and other key actors can be primed to assist here, including schools and universities, especially those with a planning education function. The work of Planning Aid has shown that education work needs repetition and ongoing effort in terms of more generalised awareness-

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raising about planning. Ensuring that the influential role of planning in society becomes more apparent is relevant, as well as making available detailed or specific training and education about (for example) the kinds of evidence used in planning, the policy process, participation techniques and conflict mediation. The role of wider awareness raising ‘should’ (but is perhaps unlikely to) rest primarily with government nationally and locally, possibly also involving outreach from universities, while training and capacity-building could usefully lie with the independent agency(ies) supposed here, to help mobilise and lead neo-advocacy in classic and activist formulations. A more proactive approach to developing capacity and awareness is a critical element here. A bottom line might be that, through the kinds of neo-advocacy formulations described, ‘at least’ people understand the role and import of planning, what the system involves and how they can engage with it. Work with local community groups by Planning Aid shows a startling lack of the most basic understanding of the planning process by members of the public. Weaknesses in terms of technical skills or the knowledges used as bases for arguments that groups may wish to articulate are apparent, but without a basic understanding of planning, effective empowerment will founder. This implies going out into communities, discussing local issues and plugging into the local plan preparation process by facilitating thought and discussion. This brings into view different audiences and the targeting of activity. This is an important practicality and is necessary to deliver benefit effectively and equitably, and yet experience has shown that this has not been achieved consistently in the past by Planning Aid or through other governmental activity. So, while effort to educate through seminars, school sessions and the like are important, it is the grassroots engagement prior to and during phases of planning contention that needs concerted effort.

Co-production on what terms? Given the foregoing discussion, our view is that a post-collaborative orientation is needed to help challenge and re-perform planning.

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The culture of planning and local government in particular must shift to accept that wider values, views and aims need to be properly rehearsed and deliberated. If necessary this will need to be done ‘(ant) agonistically’ – that is to say, involving creative conflict to expose flaws and (mis)calculations that may otherwise remain obscure. This is not a new argument but the impetus for this does need further momentum and implies little short of a planning system renewal. Moreover, it requires a more organised and supportive framework with a resource pool that can enable legitimate neo-advocacy engagement as part of a wider project to reshape and reorient the culture of planning. As Neuman (2000) critically observes, any process that involves community input and which needs to reach some form of consensus, or at least demonstrate transparency in reaching an outcome, ‘must be institutionally constructed and sanctioned in order for them [the input] to retain their validity and value. That is, they need codified links to arenas of power’ (Neuman, 2000: 346). While such concerns present real challenges to be overcome, the co-production of advocacy itself forms part of the answer to influencing and entering those arenas of power. The aim of enabling participation for those unlikely to engage without support is central here and associated partnering or co-production must relate usefully and substantively to the episode or task in hand. This implies that there is a wider audience who need to listen and pay attention to this message, including local authorities, central government and the wider planning profession. This attentiveness must involve recognition that it is no longer enough to rely on oneoff participation projects, or consultation exercises where the onus is placed on actors to respond, regardless of their ability to do so effectively. Instead a reorientation is required and formulations of progressive co-production must be brought into and accepted as part of a healthy if conflictual dynamic in planning. Rather than being seen as problematic or an empty gesture which has led to disillusionment and disdain of orthodox planning practice, co-production should be regarded as a valuable process in of itself as part of participation strategies. We are cognisant of the difficulties here, but the requirements

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placed on local authorities in particular need to be reviewed. The quite basic principles of accountability need to be maintained through the policy framework and applied to participation in planning, that is: transparency, responsibility, voice, redress and responsiveness (see, for example, Gyford, 1992; Ranson, 2003). This understanding about argumentation and facilitation will need to be present and maintained in the independent body for which we argue. As shown in the Planning Aid experience, a drift away from such a core mission can easily occur without appropriate internal governance arrangements. This type of reorientation should set up conditions for more effective collaboration and healthy agonism, as well as legitimate the activity of neo-advocates working with citizen-planners.

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SIX Conclusion: embedding neo-advocacy in planning systems

For many years theorists considering institutional arrangements to govern multi-interest decision-making have urged that ‘systems are needed to cope effectively with problems of modern life and to give all citizens a more effective role in the governance of democratic societies’ (Ostrom, 2000: 3). While arguments about the need for advocacy and related activism (and for the Planning Aid role in principle) have not receded, the planning polity has struggled to enable the latter part of this call to action. One reason for this is that Planning Aid organisations in the UK have been without the wherewithal or conditions to provide a more pervasive system of support. This corresponds with the mainstay of the critique levelled by Allmendinger (2004; 2009). A more radical rethink of Planning Aid was intimated in that assessment, in order to enable forms of advocacy planning to become established. It has become clear over time that the role for Planning Aid as conceived by the early proponents of advocacy planning is one that cannot be easily reconciled with current neoliberal governmentalities, yet it is this very tension that highlights how important it is that alternatives and challenge (that is, forms of agonistic exchange) are present in the system and voiced in opposition (that is, forms of antagonistic

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exchange) where necessary. Neo-advocacy activity is needed to bolster (post)collaborative forms in order to hold the system to account and provide needed balance. This is particularly so given the effective lobbying and advocacy role that the private sector plays on behalf of the development industry, a function that has grown significantly since Friedmann (1987) highlighted it 30 years ago. The experiences of those engaged in action groups, or other vehicles where advocacy and agonistic exchange have been involved, highlight that attempts to challenge and debate planning issues have been faced with numerous constraints and obstacles. It is also evident that, for some groups and neighbourhoods, there has been success in gaining access to decision-making and in influencing policy. These instances have been hard-fought and have typically required articulate and determined local actors to effect and sustain them. It is also recognised how challenging it can be to enable and maintain inclusive participation in such environments (Eversole, 2012; Botes and Van Rensburg, 2000). This assessment highlights issues with the design and operation of the planning system overall. In our view, the state of public attitudes and limited engagement with planning is an outcome of the limited thought given to embedding inclusivity within the design of planning institutions; the patchy response of national and local government to the empowerment agenda over time also bears responsibility here. In this book, we have reflected on Planning Aid’s past and more recent performance and found that the ongoing discontent with planning outcomes means that targeted support for communities is needed. Planning Aid’s past work has only scratched the surface of the latent need for a rebalancing in the planning process. In essence, we argue that waiting for radical system overhaul is an unsatisfactory response; a supported neo-advocacy organisation can assist communities directly and immediately, calling powerful actors to account and also act to help maintain pressure for system redesign. The account of Planning Aid presented here may be viewed alongside the narrative of how planning has been reshaped in England as a result of the political environment and institutional reform. Serial government spending cuts legitimated under the umbrella of austerity

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and a growing reliance on a marketised provision of planning services has altered the capacities and orientation of local authority planning departments. While we are not naïve about local government’s record on community engagement, such changes have tended to inhibit rather than encourage meaningful community engagement and the main vehicle for engagement (neighbourhood planning) has been found deficient in ways critical to our argument (for example, there is uneven take-up, it is burdensome, and there is a replication of imposed agendas). These issues are supplemented by other substantive pressures such as the chronic need for affordable housing (in the context of a housing crisis), the persistent gulf between incomes and quality of life, and the poor quality of many new developments (House of Lords, 2016). Taken together these lend support to the argument presented here that neo-advocacy is needed more than ever by communities in order to challenge and supplement the quality of existing planning debates. This can both enrich the process and inform or bolster the substantive aims of planning. While Planning Aid has lacked a clear framework for progressive action and relied on a rather hazy or nebulous set of aims, it appears that it has never received unequivocal support from the state, or consistent backing from within the planning profession either. It seems to us that any organised advocacy offer has to have a defined ethos; a clear set of purposes based around a theoretical and ethical locus; a frame of reference as well as any firm paradigmatic or epistemological orientations. It also needs to be operating with adequate resources and be well understood by other actors. Clear aims within a reoriented neoadvocacy organisation and a modicum of understanding from the state about its purpose and value will go some way towards enabling success. These points are raised given the doubts about both the reach and the extent of work effected in the past and the longer-term influence on the communities supported or outcomes achieved. On the basis of this experience overall, and in the context of current neoliberal conditions in planning, rather than abandoning advocacy, what is required is the reverse. Part of this prescription is an ‘arm’s-length’ agency independent of local and central government

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to support and enable classic/activist advocacy. This would provide a significant step forward and build on the experience of Planning Aid. Being cognisant of the mixed record of central and local government performance in relation to participation, it is crucial to value and learn from the spirited activities of a selection of lobby and activist groups, and take note of the increasing imbalances in the system (given the rise of private advocacy). Bailey (2010: 319) reflected a similar view in arguing for enhanced community involvement: ‘the traditional view is that community involvement can be added onto existing decisionmaking and service delivery bodies but increasingly it is being argued that these agencies need to be completely recast in order to give primacy to service users.’ A neo-advocacy formulation should be one which keeps challenge, capacity building, education and advice core to its mission. This reflects the imbalance of power and access, and responds to the fluidity and myriad scenarios that are manifest in planning and development today. These scenarios require intermediaries to explain, support and engage with, and on behalf of, marginalised interests. We argue that the approach we present here has at least some prospect of addressing the five barriers and limitations found in deploying advocacy and other support via Planning Aid in the past, namely: 1. Difficulty of reaching and selecting client groups or individuals for support This relates to confidence and clarity of mission and resourcing, as well as to training and understanding within the cadre of advocates to ensure that identification of issues and cases is actively pursued. 2. The danger of limited or qualified/conditional support This is affected crucially by the question of independence and closeness to government in particular, and adds to the case for a separate, adequately resourced and well-managed body. Issues of how and what to do with and for communities would need to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis. 3. The possibility of limited horizons being offered up by advocates (that is, the ‘classic’ variant of advocacy) Again this raises the question of training, inculcation of a neo-advocacy ‘toolkit’ and good management, as

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well as the points already made about (in)adequate funding and in point 2 above. 4. A lack of capacity-building effort and infrastructure to create self-sustaining activist communities This is also perpetuated due to conditions of engagement being partly imposed by funders, as well as inadequate thought being given to how to support and mobilise planning advocacy volunteers. This may also be alleviated by appropriate funding and continuity of mission and effort over time. 5. Overall, a lack of power and resources to challenge elite or dominant interests effectively This is a critical issue, and a lack of confidence among professional planners to act as advocates in current conditions, and a weakened, fragmented profession, exacerbates the issue. Creating effective teams and assemblies of resource case by case is a critical role for a neo-advocacy agency.

What is to be done? Institutionalising neo-advocacy This brings us to a point where practical consideration of how neo-advocacy will be instituted on a stable basis is required. This is intended to propel key actors towards discussion and reflection about how this call can be implemented. The discussion about advocacy and Planning Aid sits alongside an account of how participation has been a continuing challenge for central and local government to address. For those less well positioned to engage in planning the extent of effort has been limited and the results have achieved little more than episodic or fractional change. Debates over the legitimacy and outcomes of planning have repeatedly reinforced the message that if the public are to support planning and gain confidence in local democracy then the co-management of change in the environment is a critical component. The foregoing discussions have identified that over a period of nearly half a century inclusive participation in planning has been at best patchy and at worst tokenistic on the part of government and of private sector interests. Efforts to counter this from within communities has been valiant, if limited in both scope and reach. Despite strong support in principle and warm words in the past, there has been little

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appetite from government to see a neo-advocacy mission embedded as a necessary feature of the planning system. It appears that some quite basic lessons are still being denied and the will to embrace a progressive participatory system is lacking on the part of central and much of local government in the UK. This situation has meant that local authorities, themselves sometimes conflicted and certainly constrained, struggle to call to account powerful and well organised interests on the one hand, and fail to orchestrate meaningful inclusive participation on the other. More recent ‘solutions’ such as neighbourhood planning in England, as a purportedly community-led process, have done little to effectively mobilise marginalised groups and voices. Resource limits, pressure from local and national political elites, and a lack of skills in and around local authorities (and within many neighbourhoods) act to limit meaningful and inclusive engagement. Together such conditions combine with existing inertias and agendas (for example, economic ‘growth’, ‘speed’ in planning) to inhibit cultural change in planning; particularly in terms of seeking out planning issues and ensuring inclusivity. Planning as a profession has diversified and accountability of planning activity needs further assurance. The neo-advocacy approach can challenge professional planners and other professions and interests to ensure that their arguments and projects are sustainable; not only in terms of procedure or in policy terms, but that they are sustainable morally and ethically. This serves an important function in terms of local accountability and to orientate planning substantively (see Wachs, 1985; Lennon, 2016; Davoudi and Bell, 2016) and, in a sense, serves as a proxy for social responsiveness. We do not see the neo-advocate as solely the preserve of public servants in their ‘spare time’, however. A reworked institutional arrangement must gain a degree of approval and provide a platform for action. The institutional design and the status of a neo-advocacy agency (and the already expressed questions of consistent resourcing) appear critical to us. While funding is always likely to prove challenging, and there are plenty of calls on public money, we argue that, in planning, inclusive engagement needs to be seen as a priority: a ‘protected activity’ that can add value and deliver

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wider benefits. A service of the type discussed need not be expensive, especially if the basic costs were shared among all local authorities and with central government. It is worth highlighting that there were 336 local planning authorities (including the National Parks) in England alone in 2017 and a small, set contribution annually from each could cover the funding needs of an effective central neo-advocacy organisation with supported volunteers. Thus our prescription features a small hypothecated charge on local authorities, and some modest core funding from central government that would represent a tiny sliver of the resources currently directed towards other schemes, incentives and activities, and only a fraction of revenues generated through planning fees: noting that for Planning Aid England the RTPI struggles to find even a modest amount of core funding to support PAE and that Planning Aid in Scotland relies heavily on the Scottish Executive. A functioning participatory planning needs stability and an independent or arm’s-length organisation with specific skills and good relations with the planning profession, as well as related professions across the built and natural environment. A national or federated body can more easily facilitate training, deploy resources and ensure the maintenance of skills and the sharing of valuable practical experience. Moreover, this sits in line with a trend to share and co-support shared services. The institution that we speak of here has a critical organisational, training and information-sharing role to mobilise the neo-advocacy function – as part of a new orientation for planning. Such an agency can facilitate professional planners and others to contribute by working with groups in communities and often as part of teams of volunteers. This mix might well include students, semi and retired professional planners, and those with at least some of the skills needed to aid the community with the tasks in hand. Yet bringing into being such an organisation, or reworking an agency based loosely on the lines of Planning Aid is only one element. Beyond organisational arrangements there are a number of further measures to be contemplated and that need be given shape in forming an enabling operating environment. These need to be considered and followed through to give such an enterprise a realistic chance of sustaining

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forms of progressive inclusive planning. Clearly the arrangement(s) called for here should build from past experience and with wider aims about empowerment and capacity-building in mind. Thus, the following issues and questions need to be confronted by policymakers if neo-advocacy is to be entertained and a related support agency is to be sustained: 1. How can professionals and volunteers be supported in the types of neo-advocacy activity discussed? 2. What resources and other means will be available, and from what source, to assist communities to engage on their own terms and as part of the neo-advocacy offer? 3. What are appropriate terms of engagement – what measures and processes are to be in place for engagement and, for example, expressed as statutory requirements? 4. How are different inputs treated by powerful actors – how is the engagement induced, deliberated, deployed or otherwise discounted? Where neo-advocacy is activated – what means of reaching decisions are to be operated (and transparency of rationale ensured)?

The ‘rules of the game’: how to ensure accountability? As indicated above, the obligations of local authorities both in process terms, and in terms of how inputs are received and used merit attention. While the focus of this book is to critique and highlight the role of (neo)advocacy planning and associated issues in the planning system, clearly the way that such activity is greeted by power holders, and particularly local authorities, is also important. One of the key factors influencing uptake is that the neighbourhood plan gains statutory status and forms part of the local policy framework. In sum, it holds the promise of power. Participants in planning will very often be influenced by rational choice (Parker and Murray, 2012; Mace and Tewdwr-Jones, 2017); they need to know that their input will be recognised in some way. While neighbourhood planning forms part

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of the English system it is not present elsewhere and indeed may not remain in the longer term. How such inputs are induced, received and assessed and resolved and how feedback and explanation about the consequent decisions taken, is lacking. Responding to these questions and those of transparency seems the minimum requirement for a system that will host and partner neo-advocacy. As outlined in Chapter One (and in Figure 1.1), our reformulation of advocacy planning plays to an intermediate role that involves a combination of previously labelled ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ forms. In this sense, it sits both within formal pre-existing channels of engagement, thus lending it institutional legitimacy, and outside of the system. This is important since it leaves the possibility of exacting pressure via protest or other lobbying forms on the ‘system’ – effectively holding it to account – as needed. The status of inputs to the planning system are mentioned by Neuman (2000) as a critical issue and indeed Healey (2015; 2011) indicates that ‘progressive localism’ does indeed require that authority and associated structural arrangements are aligned. Such views imply that rules need to be robust enough to keep space for all interests and for the validity of their claims to be properly deliberated. It is, Healey argues, ‘important to work out where, when and how such discussions and debates will move from broad public forums, to more specific institutional arenas as ways forward get to be resolved’ (Healey, 2011: 23). This reminds us that neo-advocacy also has to help bring about discernible results for the interests assisted. Thus clear local policy, directed from above, regarding not only how and where inputs are possible but, critically, how such inputs will appear in the next stages in the planning process, is important. This will go some way to holding local authorities and other powerful interests to account for their actions and whether they achieve more (or less) deliberative outcomes. If Healey (2011; 2015) is right in asserting that new governance arrangements are needed for a progressive localism to flourish, then such issues do need to be adequately absorbed; neo-advocacy forms provide a facilitatory element for such progression. Little is really known about the full extent of need for neo-advocacy support; this is

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clearly unsatisfactory but also understandable given that ‘need’ is likely to be rather elastic or ‘supply-led’, and how to cope with the likely demand for support needs attention. The wherewithal and resources should exist and be deployed in order to find out more about what communities really need. Proactively establishing need and prioritising particular communities and situations should be one of the roles for a Planning Aid/neo-advocacy organisation and its operatives, be they employees or volunteers. It is unlikely that such a role in identification could or would be performed otherwise – certainly experience has demonstrated this as discussed above. Good governance in a neo-advocacy body is also necessary and oversight, steering and accountability via a board of trustees for the agency will be needed. Those overseeing the activity or projects being pursued will necessarily come from a mix of sectors (for example, public, private, third sector, communities, higher education) and draw on experience from board representatives as appropriate. The substantive aim spoken to here is that it has to be an organisation that recognises its wider public responsibility on the one hand, plus the need and desirability of encouraging and enabling full debate and challenge for important decisions being taken locally on the other. Planning Aid ‘rebooted’ (or whatever may emerge in the coming years) should mobilise communities to engage critically, to help people think and reflect, as well as challenge and reorient planning. The presence of a stable institution that has as its main role a neo-advocacy orientation merits our serious attention. This need not be a dogmatic organisation, but one that is relevant and which sources its operations based on what is needed by communities, rather than a pre-set organisational agenda, or agendas set by government. Our closing remarks act here to stress that the activity suggested should be nuanced in the light of participatory theory generated over the past 40 years. To be credible and help bring more balance into planning and development, a neo-advocacy body should adopt a post-collaborative position. Such a body should make creative use of techniques and opportunities afforded by and explained through other channels and sectors – including technological advances – as well as

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the legacy of experiences drawn from organisations such as Planning Aid and in the light of the realities of power and resource distribution in society. As we said towards the beginning of this work: this will not be easy given past experience where participation has been all too easily dismissed as a luxury. We argue that such arrangements cannot be regarded as either luxurious or vexatious: it is critical for local democracy and the sustainable future of our villages, towns and cities.

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Index Community development 21, 47, 86, 91 Community planning 4-5, 68 Community organising 10, 49, 52, 87 Disadvantaged communities 4, 8, 49, 69-71, 75, 83, 87 Conservative Party 22, 36 Consultants (planning) 5, 37, 71, 77 Consultation 16, 20, 23, 35, 57, 82, 94 Co-option (of interest and community) 18, 23, 30, 51 Co-production 7, 13, 29, 37, 39 et seq, 49, 71, 82, 87, 93 et seq

A Accountability 17, 29, 88, 95, 102, 104 et seq. Activist planning 2-3, 7, 11, 13, 18, 32, 46, 51, 55, 62, 67, 71, 81, 86, 93, 97, 100 Advocacy Coalitions (and Framework) 48 Advocacy, for the powerful 5, 36, 62, 83, 98 Agonism (and agonistic pluralism) 2-3, 11, 28-33, 42, 46, 52-61, 79, 82, 84, 97-98 Alinsky, S. 10, 52 Arnstein, S. 23-24 Austerity (and see austerity localism) 8, 18, 36, 56-57, 74, 98

D Dahl, R. 2, 44-45 Davidoff, P. 11, 28, 49-52, 78, 83, 86 DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) 35, 38, 71, 82 Development and Developers 4-5, 8, 11, 17, 21, 32, 35, 44, 52, 57, 84, 88-90, 98 Digital divide, exclusion 89

B Barriers, to participation 7, 30, 57, 76, 100

C Citizen-planners 25, 39-40, 52, 58, 88, 95 Collaborative planning (and postcollaborative) 3, 7, 18, 28-32, 36, 39-42, 45, 49, 54, 61, 70, 79, 82, 90, 98, 106 Community

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Justice and injustice 32, 45, 54, 102 spatial, 46, 54 environmental 55

E Education 2, 4, 11-12, 45, 52, 56, 65, 68, 73, 92, 100 Elite(s) Elite theory 40, 44, 55, 101 Elitism 54 Equity planning 7, 19, 30,41, 50, 56, 92 Empowerment Engagement 2 et seq, 15 et seq, 32 et seq, 46-47, 57, 68, 81-82, 86, 91, 94, 99, 101 et seq.

K Knowledge asymmetries 38, 44, 75 co-construction 9, 25, 39, 64 expert 6, 9, 41, 54, 89 lay 12, 15, 91

L Labour Party (and New Labour) 31, 57, 65, 67-70 Learning (and ‘double-loop’ learning) 40, 46 Legal Aid 28 Local Authorities (including LPAs) 12, 19, 23 Localism 5, 22, 31, 34, 36-37, 57, 74 ‘austerity localism’ 18, 36 ‘Progressive localism’ 105 Localism Act (2011) 13, 22, 3637, 71, 82 Local Plans 20, 22, 66, 82-83, 93

G Governance 5, 10, 30, 33 et seq, 41, 43, 95 et seq, 105 et seq. Growth and ‘growth machines’ 5-6, 8, 37, 102

H Healey, P. 16-17, 20, 28-31, 105 Housing and affordable housing 5, 12, 37, 88, 99

I Inclusion and inclusivity 2, 7, 1011, 16, 24, 29-30, 35 et seq, 45, 51, 71, 82, 98, 101 et seq symbolic 24, 101 Institutions and institutional arrangements 3, 6, 15, 25, 32 et seq, 43, 54, 61, 82, 97, 101 et seq Insurgent planning 17, 29, 47, 54, 102 Intermediaries and intermediary planning 3, 13, 25, 45 et seq, 53, 74, 86, 92, 100-102, 105

M Media (and technology) 17, 88 Mouffe, C. 29, 32-33, 52

N National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) 71 Neighbourhood Planning 20, 32, 36-40, 57, 63, 69-77, 81, 87-89, 92, 102 Neo-advocacy XX Neoliberal, neoliberalism 3, 5, 13, 15 et seq, 29, 31 et seq, 36 et seq, 44, 56, 78, 84, 97, 99

J Jacobs, J. 9 Just Space 73

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INDEX

New Labour 31, 57, 65 et seq, 74

Rational choice 104 Resources 2, 7-9, 33, 43, 50, 54-55, 61, 70, 77, 84, 90, 99, 101-104 RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) 7, 11, 62-64, 74, 78, 92, 103

P Participation (in planning) 1-3, 5, 10, 15 et seq, 28 et seq, 43, 54 et seq, 66, 73, 78, 81 et seq, 89, 92 et seq, 98, 100 et seq, 107 Peattie, L. 51-52, 56, 65, 81 Planning Aid England 7, 13, 28, 59, 61 et seq, 70 et seq, 103 London 50, 62, 73 Northern Ireland 64 Scotland 7, 50, 63-64 Wales 7, 50, 63 West Midlands 63, 74 Planning - neighbourhood (and see Neighbourhood Planning) 3738, 70, 81, 83, 92, 98 Education 2 et seq, 11 et seq, 45-47, 52, 65 et seq, 73, 79, 92 et seq, 100 - profession 2-3, 5, 7-12, 15, 2122, 25, 35, 38, 41-43, 47-55, 62, 66, 77-78, 87-90, 99, 101-104 - rational 8, 29-30, 47, 50, 63 - stages 39, 51, 72, 85, 87, 105 - system, the 3, 6-7, 9, 13, 15-16, 21, 25, 34, 37, 44, 47, 56-57, 6254, 78, 83, 89, 94, 98, 102 Pluralism 2, 32-33, 42, 52 Policy Disruption 3, 17, 55, 73 Politicians 17, 19, 48, 53, 81, 87 Post-political, the 18-19, 34 Protest 3-4, 7, 11, 17, 32, 35, 105 Public interest 1-2, 6, 8-9, 29, 48, 53, 78

S Sager, T. 25, 28, 32, 47, 58, 86 Skeffington report 21-22 Sustainable Development 1, 5, 19, 48, 82

T TCPA (Town and Country Planning Association) 26, 27, 6263, 65-66, 77 Technology (use of in planning) 16, 40, 88, 106 Transactive planning 53, 56

V Viability (development / plan) 4, 72, 91 Volunteer(s), volunteering 12, 14, 64, 70, 76-78, 86, 90-92, 101 et seq.

W Wilde, O. 1, 2, 126

Z Zizek, S. 17, 127

R Rationality (see Planning, rational)

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“The book combines historical analysis of advocacy planning with a critical assessment of the current policy environment to provide both a must read and a rallying cry for all those committed to ensuring greater participation in the planning process.” Sue Brownill, Oxford Brookes University

This book examines the challenges in delivering a participatory planning agenda in the face of an increasingly neoliberalised planning system and charts the experience of Planning Aid England. In an age of austerity, government spending cuts, privatisation and rising inequalities, the need to support and include the most vulnerable in society is more acute than ever. However, forms of Advocacy Planning, the progressive concept championed for this purpose since the 1960s, is under threat from neoliberalisation.

Gavin Parker is Professor of Planning Studies at the University of Reading, UK and has written extensively on the topics of citizenship and participation in planning, including neighbourhood planning. For two years (2012–14) he directed Planning Aid England.

GAVIN PARKER AND EMMA STREET

Emma Street is Associate Professor of Planning and Urban Governance at the University of Reading, UK. Emma’s research focuses on urban governance, policy and planning, and architecture and urban design.

P O L I RCEYS EPARRECSHS

Rather than abandoning advocacy, the book asserts that only through sustained critical engagement will issues of exclusion be positively tackled and addressed. The authors propose neo-advocacy planning as the critical lens through which to effect positive change. This, they argue, will need to draw on a co-production model maintained through a well-resourced special purpose organisation set up to mobilise and resource planning intermediaries whose role it is to activate, support and educate those without the resources to secure such advocacy themselves.

www.policypress.co.uk RESEARCH

GAVIN PARKER EMMA STREET

ENABLING FAKE GOODS, PARTICIPATORY REAL MONEY PLANNING

Planning aid and advocacy in neoliberal times

ISBN 978-1-4473-4139-0

RESEARCH

POLICY PRESS

ENABLING PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

“Parker and Street’s well-informed book sets out an interesting proposal for securing greater justice within planning. It is sure to provoke intense discussion within professional and political circles.” Huw Thomas, Cardiff University

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