Changes to TPP Senior Route guidance

The TPP Professional Standards Committee (PSC) has approved new guidance for the Senior Route to TPP. This has been available from the beginning of TPP and is for more experienced professionals. It avoids the need for a professional review, but asks for a greater breadth of transport planning work at senior level – i.e. working without supervision and having the lead responsibility for a project or key area of work. This is the Proficiency (P) level required for a selection of the 10 defined technical Units, Data plus 3 for Standard Route and Data plus 5 for Senior Route.

The original submission format involved a full and detailed CV prepared and mapped specifically to the TPP requirements, referenced to an application form which covered the same Units as the Standard Route. However, guidance on how to complete the forms has not been as precise as the guidance for the Standard Route and had no specific guidance on length or format.

After a full review, PSC has now confirmed that the Senior Route will continue to be available but the guidance has been revised. This will now involve more written content for each Unit in the application forms, but removes the necessity for a new and extensive CV which in turn has to be cross referenced. In this sense it becomes more comparable to the Standard Route approach.

The PSC has also decided to allow a transition period of 9 months to allow those who have started their applications on the old system to complete using that format. However, it is open to all Senior Route applicants to use the new guidance with immediate effect.

TPS Skills Director, Keith Buchan, said:

“The senior route has proved a valuable pathway to TPP and will continue to be so in future. The new guidance creates greater clarity and should encourage greater consistency in applications. We have allowed sufficient transition time to be fair but also hopefully a spur to anyone who is close to completing to get their submission in soon. Senior Route applications can be submitted at any time so are not constrained by the Spring/Autumn cycle for the Standard Route. We look forward to hearing from you soon!”

You can read the new guidance here

For further information on skills pathways at all levels, please contact the skills team through skills@tps.org.uk.

The Transport Planning Professional (TPP) qualification is run by TPS and CIHT working in partnership. It has now achieved chartered status: CTPP.