Careers in Planning

Our graduate employment record is excellent, with 94% of our graduates finding jobs quickly after graduation, and often before in the case of MPlan students.

Our graduates go on to a wide range of planning and planning-related destinations, including:

Local authority planning departments (development control, forward planning, urban design, heritage and conservation)
Private sector planning consultancies
Urban design consultancies
Transport planning
Regeneration
Regional Development Agencies
Pressure Groups
PhD study

University of Sheffield planning graduates can be found at the highest levels of planning practice. Our graduates don't just work in the UK many of our students work internationally in the planning field, we currently have graduates working for UN HABITAT and Oxfam.

The next 5-10 years will be an excellent time to be a planning graduate. Already, our graduates have a number of choices of destination, and this is likely to increase in the future.

For further information on careers in planning including information for Planners on the skills gained through their degree, what graduates do, case studies and links to vacancy websites see The University of Sheffield's Careers Service website;

Careers with your degree - Town and Regional Planning

For general advice on careers including information on career planning, applications and interviews see:

Careers Service

hannah smith

Recent graduate Hannah Wright tells us about employment after TRP

Why did you decide to take the course you did?

It took all my favourite parts of human geography and made them practical and applicable to real life. I didn’t want to do a degree that didn’t necessarily lead anywhere, so I liked that the course was professionally accredited to a specific organisation.

Tell us about your current job.

I work as a Graduate Planner at Arup, which I started the week after graduation. I work at the Arup Campus in Solihul, which was specifically designed to enable multidisciplinary working. Currently we are working on a large infrastructure project. I am involved in both the planning and community assessment streams of work. These require me to engage with a range of environmental specialists such as acousticians, landscape architects and heritage experts, as well as a range of engineers including understanding engineering plans. The work I am doing is one of the first thorough community impact assessments included within an EIA, so I am getting to help shape the methodology for a ground breaking piece of work, and helping to shape future development requirements. I’ve also somehow become the team’s GIS specialist – something I never imagined happening as I struggled through Ed Ferrari’s GIS module!

What are your ambitions for the future?

I hope to soon become a chartered town planner, and continue progressing within Arup. I am really looking forward to having a chance to work on a wider range of projects, as my first six months have been dominated by one major (but hugely interesting) one!