Summer Scheme Student, Commercial Planning Review

The role consisted in supporting the commercial Planning team at savills with tasks on various projects such as industrial schemes, residential and educational schemes. This included summarising planning contexts and writing planning assessments for planning statements as well as researching site allocations, environmental designations and planning history for land appraisals. Other responsibilities included writing meeting notes, reviewing consultant reports for discharging planning conditions and updating clients on ongoing local authority planmaking processes and stages.

I would say I was given and appropriate level of responsibility for the length of the internship and the level of my role. Sometimes there were some points in time where I did not have much to do (usually a couple of hours and this only happened on about 3 days).

I would say I have acquired additional understanding of economic aspects of planning and client considerations around viability. Writing the planning contexts and researching land allocations for land appraisals has improved my ability to review local plan documents and understand how different plan documents carry different amounts of weight and how they interact with each other.
I would say the most important skills I have acquired are around commercial awareness and reviewing policy.

I received plenty of support from the team, everyone was always very available for me to ask questions and provide guidance on the tasks that I was undertaking. Whenever I was briefed on a new task the team member allocated sufficient time to ensure I was well-briefed. Sometimes it would have been nice to received additional feedback on tasks I had completed and how to improve, but I am aware this is not always possible.

Company culture was great, everyone was really friendly and approachable and it was nice to have opportunities scheduled for meeting other people from the company in formal and informal settings.

I enjoyed it very much.

Yes