ABSTRACT
The infiltration of politics into any planning system is inevitable. Planning, because of its nature and purpose, has faced constant challenges to its legitimacy over the years. It is hemmed in by an array of interest groups, which, to varying degrees, are pro-or antimarket control. Tewdwr-Jones (1999, p. 244) has argued that the British planning system has undergone ‘a transition from the Thatcherite market-dominated period of the 1980s to a system that attempts to take a more balanced approach in recognition of the environmental agenda’.
