Twenty Years as Number One

RPS has now achieved a straight twenty years at the top of the annual UK Planning Consultancy Survey’s overall fee income results. The annual Planning Survey is published in Planning magazine.

The newly released 2017 Planning Survey notes “RPS once again tops the overall table, retaining the position since the fee income survey began 20 years ago. [RPS’ total Planning & Development related] income for 2016/17 was £93.3 million, up three per cent from £90.6 million. It also topped the tables in seven of the ten biggest earning market sectors, showing about five per cent fee income growth in its most profitable sectors – transport, energy, retail and householder developments.” Overall, our fee income rose by 3% during 2017, with private sector planning fee income up 5%.

In addition to topping the main planning table by fee income for two decades this year, RPS leads the 2017 sector tables for:

• Householder Planning
• Brownfield Housing/Mixed-use
• Commercial & Industrial
• Retail & Town Centres
• Leisure Planning
• Energy Planning
• and Waste Planning

RPS ranked in the top three for the remaining three sector categories: rising to second place for Transport Planning, in third for Greenfield Housing and third for Education Facilities.

Based on the number of UK-based RTPI Chartered Planners, RPS came sixth with 111 (compared to 108 in 2016). RPS topped the poll for the total number of Planning fee earners increasing that number by 34 to 722 this year. RPS Managing Director of Planning and Environment, David Cowan, based in our Oxford office, says that RPS’ growth has been steady across the board, and particularly notable in work related to roads. “Last year, the volume of work undertaken by RPS in the UK in several key sectors continued to grow apace” says David “further building on our high levels of achievement in previous years.There are now more projects on which RPS has acted under construction than at any time in our company history.”

RPS has consistently ranked top in the majority of planning market sectors for many years always occupying the top spot for overall planning fees throughout the last twenty years. Although there have been minor changes in category titles over the years, reflecting market trends, the categories have reliably retained their main themes, and we have continued to rank mostly as number one or highly ranked in each sector of Housing and Mixed-use Development, Commercial and Industrial, Retail and Town Centres, Leisure, Sport and Tourism, Transport, Energy, Water, Waste and Education Facilities over recent years.