The Royal Town Planning Institute’s – Written Evidence (YPB0005)

 

About the RTPI

  1. The Royal Town Planning Institute (the RTPI) champions the value of planning in building thriving places and communities. With over 27,000 members worldwide, we support planners at every stage of their career: raising professional standards, shaping planning policy, and proudly awarding chartered status, the highest professional accreditation in UK planning.
  2. For over a century, the RTPI has empowered planners to deliver positive impact: creating healthy, inclusive, economically and environmentally sustainable places. As the voice of the profession, we advocate, support, and lead with purpose, professionalism, and passion.

Q1. How would you describe the current attitudes and interest of children and young people towards both built environment sector, and issues surrounding the topic?

  1. Children and young people experience the built environment differently to adults. Children and young people are not a homogenous group, however. Across the 7-21 age range being considered by this Inquiry there will be a broad range of issues to explore in relation to local planning, such as education and public service provision, transport, accommodation needs, the nighttime economy, and student housing.

 

  1. Whilst it is logical to group children and young people together, there is a need to recognise that distinct approaches may be needed to engage children and young people with varying characteristics within this group. The differing needs of children and young people are also influenced by characteristics including gender, ethnicity, religion, and ability, alongside socio-economic factors such as their local context or the income of their parents or caregivers. The difference between adults and children and young people could be demonstrated through considerations of their public transport needs, for example.

 

  1. Alongside differing needs, attitudes and interest towards issues relating to the built environment can also differ depending on these characteristics. University students may have particular housing concerns related to the specific provision of student accommodation for example, while organisations such as Make Space for Girls advocate for the particular consideration of girls and young women in the planning and design of parks and outdoor spaces. As a child or young person develops, their interactions with or attitudes towards the built environment and the built environment sector will also change.

 

  1. Children and young people interact daily with the built environment without necessarily understanding how different built environment professions, such as town planning, help shape the communities they live in. Children and young people show strong interest in the environmental and social issues that the built environment sector influences, and many already recognise the importance of creating the healthy, socially inclusive, economically and environmentally sustainable places we champion at the RTPI. A key challenge for the sector, however, is systematically demonstrating to young people the connection between the issues they care deeply about, such as climate change, the housing crisis and ensuring safe and inclusive communities, and the key role of the built environment sector in addressing these challenges.

 

  1. The RTPI promotes the planning profession to children and young people through our Ambassador programme, which sees RTPI member volunteers engage with schools and young people’s groups. Our members continually tell us that when first speaking to young people about planning, they have limited knowledge of what town planning is, how it is intrinsically linked to the issues they care about, and the many types of careers available in the planning profession. When RTPI volunteers explain how planning shapes everyday life, from transport and green spaces to climate resilience, young people quickly recognise its relevance and express genuine interest in contributing to better places and pursuing a future planning career.

 

  1. Recent evidence on climate change and mental health provided by the UK Health Security Agency demonstrates that young people are more pessimistic about climate change than ever before. The 2026 Youth Poll also indicates that young people in the UK are increasingly concerned about job insecurity. It is our responsibility across the built environment sector to communicate to young people that the professions within our sector, which collectively employ 12% of the workforce in the UK and contribute to 24% of Great Britain’s total GVA, provide meaningful career pathways that can empower them to shape positive environmental, economic, and social outcomes.

 

  1. A significant barrier to demonstrating to children and young people the link between the issues they care about and the planning profession as a valuable and rewarding career choice is the level of resourcing required to undertake sustained engagement with schools. Planning does not feature within the national curriculum, meaning outreach activity relies heavily on individual efforts from volunteers and schools, rather than being embedded within national curriculum content. The onus is on individual volunteers and teachers to make overt the links to the topics covered within the curriculum and the built environment.

 

  1. As a result, engaging with schools often requires significant time, coordination and relationship building, which can be challenging for a profession already under considerable capacity and resourcing pressures. This undertaking can also be challenging for teachers who, without clear guidance or requirements, may not see the value of embedding built environment topics into a busy curriculum.

Q2. Does the national curriculum include sufficient references to topics related to the built environment? If not, how could the built environment be better incorporated?

  1. The national curriculum references many topics related to the built environment across a range of subjects. As we note above, however, the connections between different topics and the skills learned in subjects such as maths, science, geography and English, and their relevance to the built environment sector, may not be clear to students. The RTPI therefore recommends that planning is better embedded into existing national curriculum content and made more overt, alongside consideration of a GCSE in the built environment. This could be achieved through linking existing curriculum content to planning concepts, alongside engaging children and young people more in the planning process, as we set out in Q4 and Q5. Greater alignment with the national curriculum also requires greater collaboration across Government departments that have priorities around children and young people, including the Department for Education and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As the built environment is a cross-cutting topic, so should the engagement of Government departments in supporting a young person’s experience of place and place-making.

 

  1. To make planning more visible within the national curriculum, some light revision to existing topic areas and skills that students already study is recommended, particularly recognising the challenge educators face in fitting extensive content into limited teaching time. This could be achieved across a range of subjects, such as citizenship, through exploring the role of planning in democratic decision-making; maths, by applying skills such as calculating areas and densities in the context of towns and cities; and geography, where issues such as climate change and urban life are central.

 

  1. Within the current GCSE geography curriculum for example, the one reference to planning is made where students are asked to provide an example of ‘how urban planning is improving quality of life for the urban poor.’ While historical and international case studies are valuable, this part of the curriculum could place greater emphasis on planning and the role of planners in creating sustainable, healthy, and safe communities, including within the UK context. Making this connection between planning and the topic areas and skills students learn within their geography course at GCSE and A-Level clear, could encourage greater uptake of planning degrees or apprenticeships at university level and ultimately help address much-needed capacity and resourcing pressures within the planning profession.

 

  1. Many of our members tell us that they were motivated to pursue a planning career whilst studying a geography undergraduate degree at university and note that during their secondary school studies the link between geography topics and skills and planning was not clearly communicated. A national curriculum that better embeds careers education within existing subjects would empower students with greater knowledge of the broad range of built environment sector professions that are available for them to pursue. We echo the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) here, that a ‘robust, future-orientated education system’ is essential to addressing the persistent skills gaps facing the sector.

 

  1. The link between geography topics and planning could also be made earlier within a student’s education to encourage greater interest in the built environment, at key stage 2 and 3 levels. For example, students in key stage 2 are currently asked to describe and understand land-use patterns, although teachers are not required to explicitly draw a link between this activity and planning. This light-touch revision throughout the school curriculum to embed planning more clearly into existing content could be complemented by a GCSE-level subject in the built environment.

 

  1. Students in Wales and Northern Ireland have had the option to study a GCSE-level subject centred on the built environment. The development of a dedicated GCSE in the built environment for the national curriculum in England would encourage students with an interest in built environment-related topics to develop further their understanding of the sector and associated professions. However, the RTPI would caution against the development of a built environment GCSE that is overly construction focused, to ensure that professions such as planning are properly represented within the curriculum and that the subject is designed to appeal to a diverse range of students, including those looking ultimately to move onto apprenticeships and to university. Working knowledge of the planning system will benefit any child or young person who pursues a career within the built environment more broadly. This is due to the fundamental regulatory and coordinating nature of planning in the built environment.

 

  1. In our response to Q5 we outline the three key areas within the planning process where engagement with children and young people can take place. We further note that care must be taken to ensure that approaches taken to engaging children and young people are holistic, and that the user-experience of a stakeholder within the planning system must be considered. By embedding opportunities to engage with local plan preparation, development management and urban design initiatives at points within the national curriculum, awareness of the planning system can be built early, helping children and young people to understand how decisions about the places they live, learn and play are made, and how they can meaningfully influence them. This is particularly pressing given the intention to change the voting age to 16, and the need for young people to be empowered in their decision-making. This approach would support more inclusive and informed participation over the long term, normalising engagement as part of civic life and ensuring that future consultation is not experienced as ad hoc or inaccessible, but as a familiar and valued process. Better knowledge of planning and its role within the built environment will also provide knowledge sharing opportunities between children, young people and their carers, improving the baseline understanding the planning process more broadly within society.

Q3. How can children and young people learn about the broad range of careers in the built environment sector and be encouraged to pursue them?

  1. There are clear structural barriers to early awareness of careers within the built environment sector, particularly where planning is not embedded within the national curriculum. This limits opportunities to address well‑evidenced workforce shortages within the planning system.

 

  1. Encouraging children and young people to consider careers such as planning requires early exposure to the sector and high‑quality, meaningful engagement. Stronger and more explicit links between curriculum subjects and built environment careers should be introduced earlier within the national curriculum. Alongside the engagement we propose in our response to Q2, making more space within the national curriculum for practising professionals to go into schools and engage with young people would also help encourage young people to pursue built environment sector careers.

 

  1. Evidence demonstrates the value of this early engagement. The RTPI piloted a work experience programme involving 102 students, predominantly from Asian, Black and minority ethnic communities and lower socio‑economic backgrounds. Following completion of the programme, 93% of participants reported that they would consider a career in town planning, compared with 37% at the outset.

 

  1. Work experience opportunities are highly valuable in exposing young people to the built environment sector and the planning profession. There are practical challenges to the delivery of work experience, however, including capacity pressures within local authorities and safeguarding requirements for younger students. These constraints further underline the importance of a more robust curriculum based approach to introducing planning and the built environment. This will further ensure all young people can access this knowledge regardless of their ability to undertake formal work experience placements.

Q4. How can the perspectives of children and young people be better included in the planning process, and what is the value of doing so?

  1. There are a wide range of benefits for including the perspectives of children and young people in the planning process; these are further explored in response to Q2 and Q8. High quality community engagement is an essential but resource-intensive part of the planning process. The RTPI strongly believes that for high-quality community engagement to occur, it is vital that a broad spectrum of society can meaningfully engage with the process, including children and young people.

 

  1. In England, local planning authorities (LPAs) have statutory community engagement duties but no explicit legislative requirement to engage children and young people in planning specifically, and no specialist capacity to do so meaningfully. For a comprehensive overview of the policy and legislative context on engaging children and young people in the planning process, please see the answer to Q5.

 

  1. The challenges to engage the general public in the planning system are well-recognised. According to a 2025 RTPI and YouGov poll, only 7% of the public are actively involved in local planning decisions, such as responding to consultations or attending planning meetings. When asked why, a third (33%) said they did not know how to get involved, while two in five (39%) felt their participation would not make a difference. Nearly one in five (19%) said they had never heard of planners or town planning at all. Given the technical nature of the planning system, the difficulties that the general adult population experiences in understanding and engaging in planning processes are likely further heightened for other demographics, such as children and young people.

 

  1. Communication strategies and skills are a key part of community engagement, and we strongly recommend that planners receive training on this or work with professionals in this field to develop their communications. Best practice approaches to community engagement benefit everyone, especially if engagement is commenced as early as possible. To engage children and young people specifically, there are unique and specific sets of skills needed to deliver engagement effectively, alongside safeguarding concerns. Consideration should be given to how we are communicating place-making to children and young people of different ages. For example, play may be an appropriate substitute for place for young children; however teenagers are more cognisant of the environment around them and the idea of place and the built environment.

 

  1. The RTPI considers three key areas in the planning process to engage children and young people:

 

  1. In general, the RTPI supports ambitions to maximise community engagement through frontloading engagement early on in the planning process. This is best achieved through engagement during the preparation of local plans. This may be particularly beneficial for certain groups, including children and young people, who will be less likely to engage through the development management process. It should also be noted that neighbourhood plans and emerging spatial development strategies also provide an opportunity to engage children and young people with place-making.

 

  1. Whilst it is highly beneficial to get buy-in from children and young people in the local plan process, the RTPI does acknowledge the sometimes lengthy and complex nature of planning documents. Given the situational and hyper-local ramifications resulting from such developments, the RTPI recognises the potential benefits of consulting children and young people on more specific elements of the planning system. This could be through the preparation of design codes, pre-applications or through consulting children and young people on the provision and design of proposals for play facilities.

 

  1. As set out in response to Q1, within the umbrella term ‘children and young people’ there are a variety of considerations based on age and other characteristics. Therefore, different perspectives will need different approaches to be captured effectively in the planning process. Beyond this, there is also a benefit in engaging the parents and caregivers of children and young people to develop an understanding of how families engage with the built environment. For example, play facilities are not only frequented by children, but also by the people who care for them, and therefore must be designed with a broader consideration for target users. This can be demonstrated by providing play space that allows for easy observation for caregivers and encourages social interaction amongst both children and between their carers. Such an approach has been well demonstrated in the Cator Park of the Kidbrooke Village development within the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

 

  1. When considering the array of opportunities to engage children and young people in the planning process, care must be taken to ensure that the approaches taken are holistic. This would include managing and collaborating across the variety of opportunities to avoid duplication of efforts and efficiently managing resource. Furthermore, engagement should consider the user journey as a stakeholder within the planning system from a young child to a young adult and where possible, finding alignment with wider considerations of the built environment.

 

  1. There should also be awareness of the risks of poor engagement with children and young people, which could have an adverse effect on their perception of the built environment and trust in the planning process. Similarly, poor quality engagement could lead to misrepresentation of responses, particularly from younger children, and/or underrepresentation from particular groups.

 

  1. Beyond the educational digital tools explored in answer to Q7, there have been a number of innovations in terms of better including the perspectives of children and young people in the planning process, representing a fast and dynamic area of work in the system.

 

  1. For example, Bolsover District Council, a winner of the RTPI’s 2023 Awards for Planning Excellence, used PlaceBuilder Create a Town, a digital planning tool to drive collaboration and engagement in their local plan-making process by allowing residents to select the type of land-use they wanted to see contribute to growth in their local area. By selecting land-use tiles to move around a local map, residents could envision a local masterplan, including viability appraisals for the land-uses they chose. The results of this engagement exercise have informed the council’s growth plan.

 

  1. The tool has reduced barriers in the planning process and facilitated community engagement, especially among groups typically underrepresented in the planning process, including younger people and disabled people. More bespoke digital engagement approaches directed towards children and young people have been developed elsewhere - for example, by the Cairngorms National Park Authority who engaged on their local development plan with young children using Minecraft.

 

  1. Beyond these examples of innovations in planning authorities, the Planning Aid National Network has been heavily active in this area. The Network has undertaken a number of projects across the nations aimed at engaging young people within the planning process:

         Planning Aid Scotland (PAS): Across at least seven dedicated youth engagement projects, PAS has reached over 1,500 young people. Commissions include engaging over 200 young people aged 14–26 in shaping Scotland's National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) for the Scottish Government and informing Fife Council's Local Development Plan Evidence Report. At regional scale, PAS delivered the TAYplan youth engagement programme for the Dundee-Perth city-region’s strategic plan: five Young Placemakers presented directly to the Minister for Local Government and Planning, with their work informing TAYplan's Proposed Plan, while school visits reached over 900 pupils across nine secondary schools.

         Planning Aid for London (PAL): In London Opportunity Areas, where deprivation and displacement pressure are highest, PAL has engaged children and teenagers using tactile creative methods. Workshops in Edmonton and Newham directly informed community engagement on the Enfield Local Plan.

         Planning Aid Wales (PAW) and Community Places (Northern Ireland): Youth input through Placecheck digital mapping contributed to Place Plans in Colwyn and Newtown, subsequently adopted as Supplementary Planning Guidance. Community Places has applied youth engagement tools across Place Plans in Neighbourhood Renewal Areas, working with youth organisations and schools in deprived communities.

Should there be a statutory duty for children to be involved in local planning?

  1. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) Article 12 gives children the right to express views in matters affecting them; the built environment is precisely such a matter. However, England has not fully incorporated the UNCRC into domestic legislation and is therefore falling behind in meeting the obligations.

 

  1. The 2023 United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child specifically noted “with concern that children’s views are not systematically taken into account in decisions affecting them and in national and local decision-making, and underscoring the importance of the availability of age-appropriate information to facilitate child participation”. The Committee also recommended that the UK “involve children in decisions regarding urban-planning processes, including public transportation, and in the development of spaces for children to play”.

 

  1. In England, local authorities currently have statutory duties towards children under national legislation including the Children Act 1989 and 2004, the Childcare Act 2006, the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty. Whilst these do not directly link to planning, some organisations, such as the Town and Country Planning Association, have noted that planning officers can use these wider duties and strategic objectives as a rationale for child-friendly place-making that can feed into local plan policies.

 

  1. In Scotland, there are two legislative duties in relation to children and the planning system: one is a requirement to engage with children and young people in the planning process, and the second is the duty relating to play sufficiency assessments to inform local plans. Both duties are linked to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has also been incorporated into Scottish law.

 

  1. These duties have manifested locally, for example in Glasgow City Council, where their Play Sufficiency Assessment, supported by the Centre for Civic Innovation and awarded the RTPI Scotland Overall Planning Excellence Award in 2024, was recognised for its innovative, design‑led approach to engaging children and young people in plan‑making. Developed in response to new statutory requirements under NPF4, the assessment successfully involved over 5,000 young people across 18 secondary schools, ensuring their lived experiences meaningfully informed the City Development Plan evidence base. The RTPI commended the project for demonstrating how collaborative, child‑centred engagement can strengthen plan‑making, uphold children’s rights, and deliver more liveable, equitable places.

 

  1. Some of our members in Scotland have noted that having a statutory duty to engage children in the planning process has benefited collaboration across teams in local government, in particular the Education department, in working with planning teams to facilitate and encourage engagement within schools. However, there is still the concern that without accompanying statutory guidance on how to engage children and young people, some local authorities may only undertake engagement as a ‘tick-box exercise’.

 

  1. A different approach has been taken in Wales where the needs of children and young people are considered within the built environment through an overarching piece of legislation, the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015. This Act sets out seven well-being goals which public bodies must maximise their contribution to, as well as five ways of working to help public bodies achieve the Act’s sustainable development principle. One of the key ways of working identified within the Act is ‘involvement’, regarding the need to involve children and young people in the decisions that affect them.

 

  1. It is important to note that, in England, LPAs do have an existing statutory duty to engage communities in the planning process. Children and young people are part of that wider community that should be engaged; however, engagement with this demographic has been poor. For a statutory duty for children to be engaged and involved in local planning to be effectively implemented, it should be fully resourced and funded by Government, with supporting guidance that minimises the risk of this becoming a “tick-box exercise”. Given the amount of planning reform the sector has experienced in recent years and where a new statutory duty might be included within further legislation, it may be worth considering the opportunities for engagement with children and young people to be more developed within existing statutory guidance around engagement with communities, or within guidance on design codes.

 

  1. Any consideration of a new statutory duty for the planning system should consider the capacity and resourcing context that this duty would have to be implemented in, as well as the emerging new plan-led system which includes the development of spatial development strategies. In terms of net current expenditure, development management and planning policy account for just 0.44% of all local government spending across England.

 

  1. According to the RTPI’s State of the Profession 2025 report, spending on planning in England was 16.6% lower in the financial year ending 2025 than 2010. Planning policy, the teams who would be working on local plans, saw the deepest cuts, with spending 28.8% lower than in 2010. Over half of respondents to the State of the Profession 2025 said that their teams lacked capacity to meet demand frequently or all the time. This was more than twice as likely to be the case in the public (66.2%) than the private sector (31%).

 

  1. MHCLG’s own 2025 capacity and capability survey found that 79% of authorities reported recruitment difficulties, with an average of 5.7 vacancies per planning authority. When extrapolated to all planning authorities, this amounts to over 1800 vacancies across England.

 

  1. In the Planning and Infrastructure Act’s initial impact assessment, in relation to the preparation of new spatial development strategies (SDS), the Government estimated the cost of producing SDSs as a public sector cost of between £62.7 million to £147.2 million.

 

  1. In June 2025, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government confirmed that there would be no further Government funding for neighbourhood planning. This will have consequences for the industry’s ability to engage children and young people. The RTPI has voiced concern that due to the decision to remove funding for neighbourhood planning, such provisions will predominantly benefit affluent communities, with the skills, knowledge, and resource to be able to undertake such work. When neighbourhood planning support services are properly funded by Government and local authorities are supportive, participation in neighbourhood planning provides communities with a genuine and valuable opportunity to shape policy, influence their local area, and learn about planning processes.

 

  1. There have been welcome measures, such as ringfencing of planning fees and allowing councils to set their own fees at an appropriate level for their area within a range defined by the Government; however, these are targeted at reinvesting resources into development management teams within LPAs. This context needs to be fully considered when assessing the benefits of an additional statutory duty in relation to engaging children and young people.

 

  1. Whilst we recognise the important need to involve children and young people in local planning, particularly given the historic under-engagement with this broad and diverse group, we are clear that youth engagement should not be a substitute for wider community engagement, which should be intergenerational.

Q5. Does current government policy about the built environment effectively capture the needs of children and young people? If not, what specific policy areas could be improved?

Is there a need for specific guidance from the Government?

  1. In England the most recent proposed National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) identifies in policy PM6 that as a general principle for plan-making, plans must “engage positively with communities and other key stakeholders, at appropriate points during their preparation and using a range of methods, so that relevant issues are identified and addressed as early as possible during the plan-making process“. This is supplemented by recently published guidance, Engaging the public when preparing a local plan, which we note makes no reference to children and young people. However, the principles of engagement do encourage the use of “mixed methods of engagement to gather a broad range of insights and ensure consultations are accessible for all”. LPAs are directed to consider the following: identifying baseline demographic information, defining target audiences, and tailoring engagement approaches and publicity to meet the needs and interests of target audiences. This approach to engagement should also be considered within the context of the Government’s intention for local plans to be completed within a 30-month timeframe.

 

  1. There are many other elements of the proposed draft NPPF that align directly with engagement and assessing the needs of children and young people. Chapter 16 promotes healthy communities, which deals with the provision of community and public service infrastructure including recreational space. Alongside this, there are more specific policies relating to children and young people, with for example, more restrictive approaches to hot food takeaways and fast-food outlets within walking distance of schools. Further to this, policy HC4 introduces new expectations on engaging with local communities in the design of proposals for play facilities, to ensure that they are inclusive and reflect user needs as a part of the development management process.

 

  1. In the recently published draft Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance (DPPPG), community and stakeholder engagement is identified as a key part of the design process. The DPPPG notes that there should be community and stakeholder engagement, including inclusive engagement through proactively engaging underrepresented groups, such as children and young people. In order to support this, local planning authorities should be sufficiently resourced to engage children and young people in the design and place-making process.

 

  1. Beyond engaging young people to understand their needs, the planning system also has an overarching purpose in making future needs assessments for children and young people. This includes ensuring that all new developments are served by the necessary public infrastructure and community services for the purpose of their inhabitants, through developer contributions. Regarding children and young people in particular, the planning system ensures that education provision sufficiently anticipates and meets the demand for schools resulting from new developments. This is achieved through technical forecasting work and often long protracted negotiations. Our planning system needs to be appropriately resourced to undertake this critical work. In our response to the proposed NPPF, we identified schools’ forecasting as a specialist area where the Government should provide support to plan-making authorities. Support for LPAs in schools’ forecasting may help more clearly identify triggers for school provision which would ultimately provide more certainty for developers and help bring forward development to meet the Government’s growth ambitions, whilst ensuring the needs of our children and young people are met.

 

  1. Alongside identifying adequate education needs for children and young people, the planning system also has a key function in ensuring that there is adequate provision and accessibility regarding recreational spaces. The RTPI notes proposals within the draft NPPF to bring forward a national approach to recreational infrastructure access standards. These are supported by national guidance including the green infrastructure standards published by Natural England, outdoor sports and play recommended by Fields in Trust, and a suite of guidance issued by Sport England including accessing needs and playing pitch strategy guidance. Regarding the application of such standards, the RTPI raised concerns of difficulties in doing so without a full understanding derived from a comprehensive assessment of need undertaken locally. We also advocated for national standards to include a more detailed recognition of matters such as participation trends, capacity, travel patterns and demand. Whilst we welcome the intent of such standards in guidance, there may be practical challenges when accessing development proposals in terms of consistency as the separate respective guidance notes offer different approaches.

 

  1. Outside of guidance, the RTPI also notes the key role of statutory consultees with regard to the assessment and delivery of place-making that is supportive of children and young people. Resultingly the Government’s recent proposal to remove Sport England as a Statutory Consultee may have consequences in this regard.

 

  1. There could be a benefit to the Government producing specific guidance on representing the needs of children and young people within the build environment, but there is also a role for mainstreaming these needs within existing planning guidance, which in itself may benefit from harmonisation and consolidation to support consistent decision-making. As mentioned previously, there is the opportunity for a holistic approach to assessing the needs of young people in the built environment; additionally, the Government should consider the benefit of a cross-departmental approach to engaging people throughout their lifetime in shaping place and their environment and how that effects their engagement and need of other public services. Planners can play a coordinating role in assessing need through a place-based approach and identifying the investment required or actions for other public service delivery stakeholders.

 

Q6. What are the barriers to enabling children and young people to take an interest in the built environment outside of the classroom?

  1. The main barriers to enabling children and young people to take an interest in the built environment outside of the classroom relate to knowledge, time, and safety. Children and young people, parents, and teachers may be unaware of work experience opportunities available, alongside a lack of meaningful, safe and accessible opportunities to engage with and help shape the built environment.

 

  1. Where the connection between school subjects and built environment professions (such as planning, architecture, engineering, and surveying) is not clearly articulated, students may struggle to see the relevance of these careers or feel motivated to pursue related interests outside of the classroom. This lack of clarity particularly affects town planning, which is often less visible to young people.

 

  1. Time constraints within the school year also pose a challenge. Academic pressures, curriculum requirements, and competing extracurricular activities can limit the capacity for pupils to engage in additional learning or enrichment activities related to the built environment. There is evidence of interest in topics related to the built environment from youth groups such as Scouts and similar organisations; however, the link between these activities and careers in planning and the wider built environment is not always explicit or well developed in the UK. Elsewhere, for example in the United States of America, a city planning patch and curriculum has been introduced for the Girl Scouts by YEP! Plan to Make a Difference.

 

  1. Safeguarding and health and safety concerns can further restrict opportunities, particularly where engagement might involve site visits or workplace environments. These concerns can create additional barriers for schools and employers alike.

 

  1. Parents also play a crucial role in influencing career awareness and aspiration. A lack of understanding among parents about built environment careers and pathways can limit encouragement and support for children and young people. Clearer entry points for students leaving high school, such as the Chartered Town Planner Apprenticeship, need to be more actively promoted by employers to increase awareness.

 

  1. These barriers highlight the importance of local engagement initiatives that consider the different perspectives, interests and needs of children and young people at different stages of their development.

 

Q7. How can digital tools, including video games and social media, be used to develop children and young people’s interest in the built environment?

  1. Beyond the planning system engagement digital innovations detailed in response to Q5, digital tools can play an important role in developing children and young people’s interest in the built environment by making concepts such as design, space, and place more accessible and engaging. Video games and interactive platforms can help young people explore how places are planned, built, and used, while social media can raise awareness of built environment careers and real‑world projects. RTPI volunteers often report that students become increasingly engaged with planning concepts when they are connected to familiar video games such as Minecraft.

 

  1. This potential has been recognised more widely, including through the BBC Bitesize geography game Planet Planners, released in 2025 for Key Stage 3 students. This digital BBC Bitesize resource has been complemented by the participation of RTPI Young Planners in the BBC Bitesize Careers Tour, helping to introduce young people to planning and place‑making as a potential future career. Such national‑level initiatives by recognisable and reputable organisations play an important role in raising awareness and widening access at scale, which can be reinforced through more locally tailored engagement and learning.

 

  1. Some tried-and-tested resources to engage young people in the planning system also include the Place Standard Tool developed through the Scottish Government, NHS Health Scotland and Architecture and Design Scotland and its children and young people’s version, the My Place Card Game, Planning Snakes and Ladders, digital Placecheck mapping, and creative methods such as Minecraft-based design exercises, cardboard modelling, and map-based workshops.

 

  1. However, digital engagement should be balanced with physical and hands‑on learning opportunities. As the use of mobile phones becomes increasingly restricted in schools, practical tools such as Lego and Meccano remain highly effective in introducing younger audiences to construction, design, and problem‑solving. The built environment is particularly well suited to experiential learning, allowing children and young people to understand abstract concepts through making and doing.

 

  1. Safeguarding concerns around some digital platforms, particularly for younger children, also highlight the importance of age‑appropriate tools and supervised engagement. Combining carefully selected digital tools with practical, physical activities offers the greatest potential to inspire interest while supporting safe, inclusive, and effective learning.

Q8. What benefits could a greater interest in the built environment have for children and young people, as well as wider society?

  1. A greater interest in the built environment can strengthen civic understanding, encourage participation in local democracy, and help children and young people develop a sense of responsibility for the places they live in. This can foster pride in place and support more inclusive and better‑informed place‑making, delivering long‑term benefits for communities and wider society. By embedding built environment knowledge and engagement more firmly within the national curriculum, a broader and more diverse pipeline of future planners and place‑makers can be developed, strengthening professional capacity and helping to deliver well‑designed, sustainably planned places that serve the public interest.

30 April 2026