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Town Planners Being Laid Off


cs02rm0

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HOLA441
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Guest KingCharles1st

Gordon is slowly toasting in his own toasty thing

don't worry though- we should have money well spent on robotic litter lout tracking devices wired into the national spy network by Christmas- with a new working group to cover the new problems associated with litter dropping and its connected social implications- imagine- a knife attacker suddenly slips on a discarded empty packet of Walkers cheese and onion- who would get the blame- the litter lout- the victim, Walkers, or the poor council worker who missed that wrapper on his rounds.. hmmm.. we could possibly do with a working group to sort out things like that too...

I had a long day

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HOLA444
Friend of a friend is about to find out shortly if they'll keep their job as a "Town Planner". The word recession was even mentioned.

It's in full swing now.

This is my industry, although i work for a private consultancy and not a council.

My prediction is, within the next year the entire industry will contract by about 50%.

Our clients, the property developers, will go bust first (its already happening), and they will of course stop being able to pay their consultants, who will in turn have to lay off staff. In addition, a lot of smaller projects will get pulled on viabilty grounds. The developers landbanks will then get put on the market and get acquired by 'vulture funds', which will then need to be either aggressively renogotiated or just sat on, but town planning advice will be an important part of this, even when the rest of the property industry shuts down. The advice will, however, be a lot cheaper. At the moment it costs £300+ per hour. Crazy.

One of the problems with the planning consultancy industry is that it is only really two decades old. There has been a far greater demand than there is supply of companies and able professionals. A lot of the work is picked by small consultancies set up by ex local government officials charging £50 - £100 hr which have grown in size dramatically. However, the basis of their growth is closely tied in to the fortunes of the property market. This is the part of the industry that will be hit hardest, though the big players will take a huge whack as well.

Local Government will lay off planners as well, as there are fewer applications to process and hence less in the way of fees.

The only 'safe' part of the industry will be the part that deals with consents for infrastructure, energy, and natural resources because this is less tied in to the fortunes of the property market.

In terms of anecdotal evidence, there's not much of it.. yet . Hamiltons Architects/masterplanners (a major player in London) laid off 60 staff. Its only starting though. Watch this space

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