ABSTRACT
In Britain in the mid 1950s social service departments at central government level began to develop capital and manpower planning as well as less formal approaches, but during the 1960s tax control planning, in the form of the public expenditure survey system, came to dominate all these other activities. Such differences may be explained by the different contexts within which the planning process takes place. The different fiscal position of the United States went a long way to explain why such planning had failed in the 1960s and suggested that it might begin to develop in the mid 1970s as the budget constraints tightened. The studies would have to be commissioned and overseen in a rigorous way or undertaken ‘in house’. The results should be disseminated as widely as possible and could form the basis of discussion by the appropriate House of Commons Expenditure sub-committee.
