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In this article, Public Practice considers placemaking skills in the Welsh public sector, exploring current strengths, gaps and opportunities for building capacity.

Public Practice – the not-for-profit organisation working to build local government’s placemaking capacity – recently published its fourth annual Recruitment and Skills Report. The survey highlights the challenges officers are facing from recruitment to resourcing and retention. It captures reflections from planning and placemaking officers working in Wales, providing valuable insight into the opportunities and challenges shaping the public sector built environment workforce.

This latest report included a country-by-country comparison, demonstrating how nations were performing in different areas such as officer experience, capacity and leadership. Although the response rate for Wales was lower than England, it’s still possible to draw some specific insights. When it comes to team structure and retention, the survey paints a positive picture of public sector work in Wales, where the vacancy rate is relatively low, at around 8%, considerably better than that of other nations. Team sizes are smaller than in other countries, but show a balanced structure across the various sizes. Wales also scored highest on feeling treated fairly and rated higher than average on a leadership question: “those I report to have the skills to support me”. All of this indicates a relatively strong operational support structure.

However, the survey also uncovered a critical skills mismatch that transcends borders. The findings revealed that despite widespread recognition from teams that they are critically short of high-demand skills such as Digital and Data (71%), Environmental Sustainability (67%), and Landscape Architecture (65%), very few roles are planned in these areas; instead, Policy and Planning are by far the most likely to be recruited for in the next 12 months. This mismatch risks increasing existing skills gaps and suggests recruitment plans are instead likely to reinforce the current strengths and weaknesses of local authority teams.

Public Practice’s key service, the Associate Programme, was designed to address these capacity and skills challenges. Running since 2018, the programme places mid-career built environment practitioners into professional job placements as ‘Associates’ within local authorities to work across a wide range of place-based disciplines. Associates bring expertise from architecture and urban design to planning, sustainability and engineering. The organisation takes a capability and skills-led approach to recruitment, focusing on the benefits of building multidisciplinary teams with a diversity of skills and experiences.

The Associate Programme was recently launched in Wales, opening the opportunity for Welsh local authorities and built environment professionals based in Wales to take part. By joining the programme, authorities can access a pipeline of skilled Associates ready to make an impact, while practitioners can gain meaningful experience shaping places through public sector work.

Together, we can build a more resilient, skilled, and multidisciplinary placemaking workforce for Wales.

Learn more and get involved: https://www.publicpractice.org.uk/calendar/associate-programme