Every year, World Town Planning Day offers a moment to reflect on the power of planning — how it shapes the places we live, supports growth, tackles environmental challenges and builds community. For PNPR, much of our work involves communicating complex planning issues to professional audiences, and so we like to take the opportunity to work with our clients on the state of the sector.
This year, we've worked with three clients — Carter Jonas, Lanpro and Boyer — to articulate their own views on planning in 2025, each addressing a different aspect of the profession. Collectively, they reveal the breadth, complexity and purpose of modern planning.
Planning as a force for good
For Carter Jonas, World Town Planning Day was a chance to challenge perceptions. Too often, planning is miscast as a bureaucratic hurdle when in fact it is the framework through which we respond to the defining issues of our time: the climate emergency, the housing crisis, and the changing shape of our communities.
We surveyed planners across Carter Jonas's national team to find out what motivates them and which challenges matter most. The responses painted a picture of a profession defined by creativity, purpose and impact. Planners spoke of the legacy of their work, such as walking through a neighbourhood and knowing they had helped to shape it, and of the satisfaction that comes from working in a profession which, at its heart, balances competing needs: growth and protection, delivery and sustainability.
Carter Jonas' planning consultants spoke, too, about how planning can combat loneliness by creating places that foster connection, how heritage can be protected through adaptive reuse, and how the profession sits at the heart of climate action. For Carter Jonas, World Town Planning Day became a celebration of the values that underpin the profession — collaboration, stewardship and a belief in better places.
The policy reality behind the ambition
Lanpro's contribution this year was more sobering. We revisited a survey conducted for World Town Planning Day 2024, and asked Lanpro's planning consultants whether the government's target of 1.5 million homes this Parliament was achievable. Not a single respondent thought it was.
Two-thirds said that securing planning consent is now harder than a year ago. Despite the promise of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, planners cited broader challenges: under-resourced local authorities, slow statutory consultee responses, and the financial burden of Section 106, CIL and biodiversity net gain requirements.
Environmental constraints and development viability were common themes, alongside political uncertainty and inconsistent decision-making. Many called for more local autonomy combined with national consistency — a balance that has long eluded the system.
The responses were not defeatist but realistic. As Lanpro's leadership observed, the problem is not a single blockage but an interlocking set of issues: resources, regulation, viability and market confidence. The sector knows what needs to change — the needs government needs to listen to Lanpro's insight.
Securing the next generation of planners
For Boyer, attention turned to the future of the profession itself. A survey of graduates revealed that 11 out of 12 had discovered planning almost by accident. Few had encountered it at school, and most felt the profession was invisible to those considering careers in the built environment.
This lack of awareness comes at a time when restrictions to Level 7 apprenticeship funding is set to remove around 200 planners per year from the training pipeline: the profession will face a shortage just as it is most needed.
Graduates called for planning to be introduced earlier in schools, for more work experience opportunities, and for consultancies to be more visible to students. They also highlighted a broader issue of perception: planning is too often seen as dry or procedural, rather than the dynamic, multi-disciplinary and impactful career it is.
As one graduate put it, once you find planning, you stay — but first, someone has to help you find it.
Communicating the value of planning
Together, these three perspectives illustrate both the richness of the planning profession and the communications challenge it faces. Planners are shaping solutions to some of society's most urgent problems but the importance of their work is not always recognised outside the profession.
That's where effective communication matters. At PNPR, we're proud to work with the firms and professionals who are changing that narrative — showing that planning is not just about process, but about purpose. That's our focus on World Town Planning Day, and throughout the year too.