Alex Pointer is a Planning Policy Officer at West Suffolk Council
In 2019, West Suffolk Council offered me the chance to undertake a planning apprenticeship to help me progress my career.
I was drawn to the Chartered Town Planner apprenticeship as I had also completed the Town Planning Assistant Apprenticeship and had really enjoyed the mix of learning through experience and learning planning theory. Therefore, I enrolled onto the five-year course at London Southbank University as the modules covered a comprehensive range of planning disciplines to allow me to grow as a planner.
The benefits of mixing studying and work
The first years of the course were a learning curve. Even with the apprenticeship giving me a day a week to attend lectures and study, weekends were absorbed by reading articles to prepare of assignments and drafting coursework and I quickly learnt the importance of organising my time to balance work, studying and my free time. However, after getting settled into the apprenticeship, I quickly felt the benefits from the mix of studying and working. Applying what I had learnt through my studies to my work and used my experience from work to feed into my studies.
Planning practice modules sat alongside the traditional studies. These assignments required me to:
- show examples of developing practical experience through work
- see how planning theory is directly applied in the ‘real world’
- consider how to critically reflect on my own work in order to grow as a planner.
Like everyone else, the COVID-19 pandemic brought big challenges to how I worked and studied. Lectures moved from a classroom to a computer screen, whilst I grappled with regularly working from home. As the world seemed to grind to a halt, I really appreciated the support from my team at work in giving me advice when studying and pointing me towards information for completing assignments.
Gaining valuable experience
Alongside completing the academic side of the apprenticeship, I gained a wide range of experience within the planning system, particularly in local plan preparation, from drafting evidence base documents, up until the modification consultation as part of the examination. This experience was crucial for completing the End Point Assessment and RTPI Chartership, which required me to reflect on the work that I completed over the past two years and consider how to improve my work and develop myself as a planner. Both my work and the university supported me in this process.
A real sense of achievement
It feels amazing to reach this milestone. The apprenticeship has been a lot of work, jumping into planning processes and considerations that were new to me and gaining real-world experience in planning policy. However, looking back on what I have learnt along my apprenticeship, I’m excited to take these lessons forward as a Chartered planner and grapple with the challenges facing planning to make a positive difference for local communities and the environment.
