Advocates, advisors and scrutineers: the technocracies of private sector planning in England

This chapter studies the role of private consultants in the reformed English planning system and their impacts on the shaping of local policy priorities and practices. First, the chapter sets out the recent political context that has precipitated the rise of the ‘consultocracy’ across public services and planning in particular. Second, it outlines how the use of consultants has become ‘naturalized’ as part of the multi-change planning environment that now characterises English planning. Third, the chapter introduces interview data concerning Local Plan-making to show the scope of consultant involvement and the importance of uncovering how such knowledge is claimed and deployed. In concluding, this chapter reflects on the feedback loop between the state of ‘perma-reform’ in English planning and the expansion of consultant inputs to the system, and considers what this relationship means for our understanding of planning expertise as a social construction and political tool in a co-produced system