Clients, Customers and Consumers: A Framework for Exploring the User-Experience of the Planning Service

Abstract

Planning has increasingly been portrayed as a “service” provided to “customers”. This paper challenges such a view, and highlights some important dimensions of the relationship between planners and users of the planning service that have been overlooked in previous studies. It draws on sociological research into consumption to interrogate the various logics that underlie the concept of “customer-focused” planning services, and shows that they are typically based on an oversimplification of the relationships involved in both producing and consuming planning services. In particular, analyses of these reforms tend to underplay the demands that are made of consumers of planning services. The new analytic framework that is presented is illustrated with a case study that investigates the experience of small businesses when applying for planning permission.

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