Example public administration dissertation topic 4:

Planning – What is the need for elected member committees?

Given that a majority of planning decisions are taken under delegated powers and that, where this is not the case, councillors generally either follow the advice of their professional planners or risk having their rejections over-ruled, this dissertation questions whether or not there is a need for elected councillors to play a part in the planning making process. Suggesting that the ‘call in’ of decisions at departmental level provides an adequate accountability check, the removal of the ‘elected element’ from such decisions would, this dissertation furthers, and speed up the planning processes enabling greater efficiencies to be made. Whether or not such a proposal should apply merely to certain categories of local planning application (shops, construction of housing estates and the like) or whether it should also be applied to nationwide infrastructural developments such as HS2 is a further point that this dissertation could address in seeking to proffer ways to improve the efficiency of the present administration of planning processes within England and Wales.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Bedford, T., Clark, J. and Harrison, C. (2002). Limits to new public participation practices in local land use planning. Town Planning Review, 73(3), pp. 311-331.
• Chettiparamb, A. (2007). Re-conceptualizing public participation in planning: a view through autopoiesis. Planning Theory, 6(3), pp. 263-281.
• Townsend, A. and Tully, J. (2004, August). Modernising planning: Public participation in the UK planning system. In Conference on Urban and Regional Planning, 25-29 August, Porto, Portugal.