Evan, Planning Intern (2025)

I applied for the internship at West Suffolk Council in my second year of university. I was looking at the possibility of doing a summer internship after my second year but as a Politics and International relations students, internships within that industry appeared hard to come by. That was until my friend noticed the West Suffolk Council Internship on handshake and recommended it to me as she knew I lived near Bury St Edmunds. I saw this as a great opportunity as it was local to me and was within local government and due to the possibility of me wanting to work within government in the future, I saw this as an opening to learn and gain more experience in the field.

When I was picked for the planning and development team, I was initially sceptical as I had little idea of what surrounded planning and believed I had to be doing a degree in architecture or geography. I was quickly proven wrong as, whilst at first it was confusing, the planning team accommodated me and quickly taught me everything I needed to know about planning and of course I tried to soak up as much as possible, I soon realised that I did not need to be an architect but could instead put my analytical and writing skills that I had picked up during my studies to good use.

Working with the planning team was extremely rewarding as I was given the opportunity to work on my own real world householder applications. This involved a whole process from site visits to assess proposals, analysing plans submitted by agents and writing reports on my assessments. Sometimes I even had to negotiate with agents to amend plans which were initially unacceptable. Alongside this I also got to shadow and attend different planning meetings such as weekly lists, and delegation panel. A valuable experience for me as a politics student was getting to attend development control committee in which councillors’ debate and vote on complex applications which have had several objections or competing interests from consultees. I was also lucky enough to be able to shadow the governance and procurement department, who monitor the political side of the council, during this event.

Alongside my work with the planning team, I was also working alongside the other interns as part of our group project. This year our project was to promote domestic energy efficiency measures to local residents in West Suffolk. We hosted five market stalls in five different West Suffolk towns. However, the whole thing was a major operation which required us to work effectively as a team, time manage and work with other departments within the council.

Overall, I had a fantastic time working with West Suffolk Council and really enjoyed it. I gained invaluable experience that will set me up well for my future career’s, whatever they may be. I even now consider working in local government. I also really enjoyed working with the other interns as we bonded really well as a team.