As the course leader for a degree apprenticeship in urban and regional planning, I was interested to read about the government¡¯s proposals for apprenticeships in last week¡¯s Post-16 Education and Skills .

Keir Starmer¡¯s recent Labour conference speech set a new target of two-thirds of young people in England participating in higher-level learning ¨C academic, technical or ¡°gold-standard apprenticeships¡± ¨C by age 25, and the White Paper announced a sub-target of at least 10 per cent of young people going into study, including apprenticeships, by 2040.

In addition, the White Paper reiterates that the government will fund a ¡°¡± to support those at risk of falling out of employment or the training system to secure work or an apprenticeship. And employers will be able to spend their apprenticeship levies on short, flexible training courses, to be called ¡°apprenticeship units¡±, in ¡°critical skills areas¡±. This will ¡°enable quicker, targeted upskilling, helping employers to build a more agile and productive workforce while supporting individuals to gain skills which have a long-lasting impact on careers.¡±

This is all good. As the White Paper notes, skills shortage vacancies accounted for a huge 27 per cent of all job vacancies in 2024 ¨C up from 22 per cent in 2017. But the whole thrust of the government¡¯s aspiration to address skills shortages is undermined by its earlier to remove funding eligibility for all MA-level (level 7) apprentices over 21 years of age from next January.

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This blanket ban across all apprenticeship courses fails to take into account what individual professions need to address the skills gaps the government is worried about. And a very good example is my area, planning and the built environment.

Unlike other built environment occupations, such as architecture and engineering, planning is not an occupation that young people typically aspire to. Perhaps this is because whenever planning is spoken about by politicians or those in the media, it is usually to complain about bureaucracy stifling development and fuelling the housing crisis. Or perhaps it is because most people¡¯s experience of planning is of trying to get permission from their local council for a home extension.

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Either way, the fact is that most people entering the planning profession come to it through previous careers, either in built environment or beyond. That is why our apprenticeship at the University of Westminster is at master¡¯s level. We have welcomed planning apprentices from drama, the police and psychology, for instance, with ages ranging from 21 to 60.

Indeed, across the country, only 5 per cent of postgraduate entrants to planning are under 22. This means that 95 per cent of our students have now become ineligible for apprenticeship funding. And that is why we ¨C in common with other universities ¨C have made the tough decision to close the apprenticeship version of our postgraduate planning degrees.

But however keen the government may be to meet its of building 300,000 new homes a year, planning can¡¯t simply be swept away. Planning is about facilitating liveable cities, and planners are vital to protecting the long-term public interest ¨C including by being the voice for the voiceless when it comes to granting or refusing permission for new developments. And planners¡¯ life experience and previous careers are valuable in such deliberations.

To be fair, the government recognises that more planners are going to be needed, but it has committed to delivering only 300 new planning officers, to be spread across England¡¯s 317 local planning authorities.

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The 11 MA planning apprenticeship courses that have been established since the introduction of the levy in 2017 have produced an average of 200 planning apprentices per year for the past five years, but the profession is still . from the Home Builders Federation estimates that about 2,200 new planning offers are currently needed ¨C yet the blanket ban on level 7 apprenticeships for those over 21 will, in effect, shut down the apprenticeship route for filling those vacancies.

It is true that in recent years the government has introduced , but these fall far short of covering students¡¯ expenses. Moreover, appetite for taking on student debt is lower in minority communities and, across all demographics, drops markedly in later life (hence the well-documented collapse of part-time study following the tripling of England¡¯s bachelor¡¯s fees in 2012). Apprentices, by contrast, earn while they learn, in a real job that they typically retain at the end of their programme.

It is true that when public resources are constrained, the focus should be on priorities. However, housebuilding is very much one of those. Skills England should exempt courses that train people in priority-related professions from the level 7 apprenticeship ban. But the White Paper¡¯s deafening silence on the subject makes an already uphill battle to train enough planners feel like a losing one.

is a senior lecturer in architecture and cities at the University of Westminster, where he is course leader for the MA urban and regional planning (RTPI apprenticeship) programme.

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