Reclaiming the narrative, leading with infrastructure and AI opportunities: Reflections from the Planning Summit

By Mary Thorogood, Planning Policy Assistant, South Downs National Park Authority

As a mid-career pivoter to the profession from a former but related life in energy infrastructure engagement and policy, an invaluable complimentary ticket from Women In Planning (thank you!) was a great opportunity take a step back from the day to day, South Downs National Park is in the middle of a Reg 19 consultation!, to hear the live issues from those who are working through the vast amount of change the profession is experiencing, advising clients and members and coming up with innovative new ways of working in response. 

It was fantastic to meet so many committed planners from all parts of the profession and to hear support for what we are all trying to achieve directly from the Minister.  Three themes have stayed with me from the Summit, each building understanding from the three threads to my career.   I look forward to telling better stories and building a deeper understanding of how data is and could be shared and used as I build my career in the profession.

We are losing the narrative

The Summit kept returning, from different angles and different speakers, to the uncomfortable truth that we are all failing to tell our story to residents, investors, elected members and policymakers.  This isn’t because we don’t have a great story to tell about our role and the positive impact in places. It’s because we’ve not yet collectively fully grasped the tools of public persuasion in the context of febrile local and national politics and the rapid rise of AI.  Communities don't usually engage with Local Plans or SDSs, they engage when a development affects their street and politicians only engage when these communities hit their postbag.  By then, the narrative is lost.  

Our challenge is to reach people earlier, on their terms, in their language and to make the story about their children's futures and their community's needs, not about housing targets and policy frameworks.  Offshore wind faced a similar challenge in its early days where a too technical narrative came too late in the process and not always with the correctly defined community.  Bridget Kendrick's image of a 17-year-old on Instagram who cares deeply about housing but has never heard of a Local Plan stuck with me, how do we bring these people into the process? 

Engagement has to be built at the front end with genuine investment in communications as a core professional skill, not “just press releases”.  Genuine engagement will help protect the legitimacy of the system.  I’m excited to consider how my experience can contribute to this story-telling challenge. 

Infrastructure-led planning is critical for legitimacy of the system

With my experience in energy infrastructure, I was struck by the focus on the need for an infrastructure-led planning system, particularly from Rupert Warren KC.   Roads, GPs, water, energy, schools are the things that make housing and places work, but are generally underfunded, late, and treated as a problem for someone else to solve downstream.  This becomes a challenge to planning and delivering sustainable development, objections are often framed as “but we don’t have the infrastructure to support development”.

Focusing on infrastructure and planning it with not after development in long term cycles will help break the political short termism problem. SDSs and sector plans will be key and NISTA’s 10 year Infrastructure Pipeline is beginning to give planners, investors, developers and communities the engagement and forward look they need and deserve.  This strategic planning will help deliver housing and development that works for places in the long term.

AI is a capacity and capability opportunity and challenge for the profession, not a technological one

It’s not surprising that the practical and governance issues AI is rapidly raising generated plenty of enthusiasm and interest at the Summit.  It has also been core to my UCL studies, one of my Professors even got a shout out during the sessions!

Alistair Parvin from Open Systems Lab put it best: the planning system was built before the internet so bolting AI onto our legacy systems that use document-heavy and often opaque evidence and processes won’t create a better system that delivers sustainable development that works in the public interest. Using AI like this will serve to deepen the digital divides and the transparency and understanding issues we are experiencing with the human taken right out of the process.  Instead of applying AI to our existing systems to simply generate efficiencies, the question is how we design a more transparent, data-driven and therefore investable planning system for an AI world with humans at the centre of the loop?

There were understandable real-life concerns in the room about quality of work, continuing to deliver on planning’s purpose and ultimately, job security.  But handled properly, these changes aren’t about taking the human out of the loop but placing real-life professional expertise front and centre and redesigning the system around it.  The risk is that the moment passes for the planning profession without co-ordinated action and investment from Government, professional bodies and each one of us.  One practical thing we can all do is get curious – use the different platforms and understand what they can do and where the human intervention is needed.  Take control of your data – where is it, who is your key SharePoint and PowerBi user? 

Only by understanding AI better ourselves can we place our expertise front and centre.