ABSTRACT
Development control, the term used in Britain to define the system of issuing permits for land-use development, has for the most part been a much vilified process. Although the nadir of its fortunes has passed-the low point seems to have been somewhere between 1980 and 1985-to British ears the term rings with overtones of bureaucratic time-wasting and negativism. From within the planning profession, too, development control has not always been seen in a favourable light. For long the Cinderella of the profession, as several commentators have described it, until the 1980s it tended to attract less well qualified staff and to be associated with drudgery. The smart thing for new recruits to the profession was forward planning, and a stint in development control was regarded as a necessary evil on the path to membership of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Some of that at least has changed; there is nothing now to suggest that development control staff have fewer qualifications than their colleagues who prepare plans, and development control has for some time been recognized as no less intellectually challenging than plan-making. Yet even today, planning literature has rather less to say about the control of development than it does about plan-making and policy.
