ABSTRACT

The review of the Structure Plan began at the end of 1990. It was initiated by a group of planning officers who put together a series of papers on the contemporary state of Buckinghamshire, in terms of housing, employment and transport. The house builders employed their technical expertise in housing forecasts in order to open up the plan to changes in housing numbers. Their aim was to strengthen certain assumptions while undermining others. Other participants at the Examination-in-Public (EiP) were also hostile to certain elements of the plan in different ways. Planning consultants acting on behalf of both the house builders and landowners adopted a variety of strategies to destabilize the county's provisions. The developers used the EiP as a means of attacking many of the assumptions underlying the plan. It became clear that if the house builders wished to increase the overall number of houses they would have to do so by undermining the housing projections.