Home > News > March 2005 > 08-Mar-2005

Government provide £250,000 for planning practitioners course

Planning Minister Keith Hill has announced £250,000 of Government funding for a new course designed to enable planners to access up-to-date training at their desktops.

The Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of the West of England was awarded the funding to create a new course in spatial planning, aimed at bringing the skills and knowledge of planning practitioners in line with the Government's new planning policy on sustainable development.

Speaking at the National Planning Forum annual conference hosted by the Local Government Association in London yesterday, Keith Hill said the new course is a major development in training for planners.

The Minister said, "The Government has announced a raft of major changes to the planning system which will lead to a culture change in planning aimed at designing the creating the sustainable communities of the future.

"In our new policy statement, Delivering Sustainable Development, we have asked planners to move away from traditional land-use based planning and now we are backing this up by giving them the tools to improve their understanding and skills."

The new course is to be delivered by web-based distance learning and is aimed at those already qualified and working as planners both in the statutory, private or NGO planning environment.

Janet Askew who is leading the project for UWE said, "The most exciting part for the university is that UWE will be helping to define new concepts in planning with practitioners - putting us at the forefront of this major shift in the way planning is carried out and perceived in this country.

"We won the contract against strong competition and the ODPM was impressed with the team effort, which brought together suggestions for academic content alongside a track record of providing web-based learning packages."

The distance learning course will be put in place by UWE by the first term of the Academic Year 2005-2006.

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