Aspiring planners can now get a leg up to the profession with a diploma pathway through TAFE (Technical and Further Education) in NSW.
The Diploma of Local Government (Planning) has been created through a collaboration between the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, TAFE NSW, Local Government NSW, and the Planning Institute of Australia – with help from TAFE South Australia, from where the curriculum was adapted.
The idea is to boost the number of paraplanners in a profession that has been starved of skills especially in the past few years when we’ve heard that developers have snaffled up any talent, they can get a hold of at local council level, leaving local government open to the drawn out accusation of slow decision making. Which is no surprise given the circumstances.
The new qualification is designed to help with initial assessment, research, and review for planners. It responds to the formal acknowledgment of the skills shortage in the profession by the Australian National Skills Commission.
A recent survey found more than 85 per cent of council respondents were willing to upskill existing staff or employ planning cadets enrolled in the diploma.
Over the past two years, the shortage of planners is estimated to have created a 28 per cent increase in the average number of days to determine local development applications in the state.
The Planning Institute of Australia welcomed the announcement, saying that qualified planners were the key to ensuring NSW can plan for a sustainable and liveable future.
Fun fact: a study by Boston Consulting Group found that companies with leadership teams that have above average diversity generate, through product innovation, revenues that are 19 percentage points better than companies with less diverse leadership teams, and enjoy higher earnings, before taxes and interest (EBIT) margins, according to a recent statement from Morgan Stanley Investment Management about how executive pay, diversity and financially material ESG were factors in proxy voting. The statement added thathigher levels of gender diversity also generate fewer instances of governance-related controversies, including bribery, corruption, and fraud, according to a study by MSCI.
Buchan appointed Edward Armstrong as a senior associate on its health sector team, after 20 years of industry experience, including more than six years at Conrad Gargett, where he was most recently a senior associate. Prior to that, Armstrong had also spent 10 years as a senior architect at bureau^proberts.
Mr Armstrong currently volunteers at the Bond University Abedian School of Architecture and the Arts in Health Program at the Queensland Children’s Hospital. He aims to create healing places connected to the environment and community.
More tributes for Jeff Robinson
Tributes continue to flow for Jeff Robinson who passed away suddenly two weeks ago. On Wednesday it was the Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp who recognised his contribution to the design and sustainability world and commitment to help and inspire us to do better, go faster and be more ambitious. Watch the live recording of the Future Melbourne Committee meeting, where the comments were made.
And our obituary here.