ABSTRACT
The form of development control which emerged, originally as an administrative expedient during the first half of the twentieth century, is distinctly different from the forms of control that preceded it and from the regulatory systems of continental Europe. Yet it was in no sense a system without precedent. The insistence on flexibility and the desire for discretionary power was a reaction to the forms of regulation that had developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, there appear to be significant continuities with practice as it had developed before 1900. Measured standards and the application of rules to common problems continue in the development control system and had a clear parentage in the sanitary regulation, in control through leasehold agreements, and in the law of equity. The concern both for physical form and for land-use activity had already been the subject of leasehold agreements. The search for appropriate means of applying and enforcing policies for new development had been a preoccupation long before the establishment of town planning committees and development control sections within town halls. The fact that development control could take off so rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s as a major aspect of British town planning was due to the extensive foundations that had already been laid.
