ABSTRACT
Without going into details of current legislation and procedures, Chapter 8 considers how a planning system, especially Britain’s, works in terms of providing a legal basis for decisions, consultation, participation and working together, both within planning authorities and with other stakeholders. Participation is more than consultation, and working together is much more than both of these two. Achieving all of them can be a real challenge. This chapter also discusses the role of appeals and of positive attitudes to planning. It then gives an overview of British planning legislation’s relationship to policies and practice since 1947, drawing out what has changed and what continues to repeat. The tension between developers wanting a fairly free hand and local residents opposed to nearly all development has played out as a tendency to blame the planning system for the conflict. Governments say that they will solve the problem by simplifying the system but often end up making it more complicated.
