The right of the public to have a direct say in planning matters and the inherently political nature of planning are now taken for granted. The formal machinery for objections and appeals, initially devised only for specified uses by a restricted range of interests, is now employed much more widely. Many informal mechanisms have been created by planning authorities and others to improve the capacity of, and opportunity for, local communities and interest groups to play a part or the lead in formulating and implementing planning policy. Even so, many questions remain about the effectiveness of public participation, whose interests are served by planning, and the relationship between professional and political decisions. The first part of this chapter explains the history of public participation in planning, the nature of 'interests' and the mechanisms that enable them to influence the planning process. The second part then considers the professionalisation of planning and the relationship between the profession, politicians and the public.

The emphasis on how much the planning system should be concerned with design issues has fluctuated over the post-war period. Furthermore, what is denoted by the term 'design' has also been at times unclear and the associated terminology has changed and evolved. The purpose of this chapter is to outline where design has been seen to fit within the planning system from the national policy perspective, by briefly reviewing how such policy has developed over the post-war period. However, the chapter also attempts to resolve the confusion between the terms 'design' and 'urban design' and briefly introduces some key elements of academic thinking where appropriate.

The quote from Steve Quartermain encapsulates some key challenges for planning policymakers. If we are to have successful communities, decisions need to be made about what is 'the right stuff' – how many houses, how much shopping, new sources of employment, key services – where it should go, and how can it be put in place when it is needed. When we have new residential development, will the jobs and services be there to meet residents' needs without the need to travel significant distances? This chapter looks at some of the factors involved in making decisions about policy to influence such matters, and at the policy guidance that has helped to shape such decisions. It does this by selecting policy areas which are the major users of land identified in plans to accommodate new development.

The quote above from Secretary of State Eric Pickles may be a little knockabout in style, but it highlights that we will be as much, if not more, interested in the quality of the decision-making processes than in the details of the structures in which they are made. However, achieving accountability involves an understanding of both the where and the how.

This chapter describes the conservation-planning system and how it operates. Like the planning system, heritage protection has evolved over more than a century. Initially heritage protection was quite separate from planning but since the great post-war planning acts of the 1940s there has been substantial convergence. However, whilst conservation planning has come to be firmly embedded within the town planning system, ideas of heritage and conservation also derive from wider conceptions of cultural heritage and these are briefly reviewed at the beginning of this chapter.

This chapter gives a brief introduction to the development of the planning system over the course of the last century or so. Its coverage is broadly chronological and concentrates on the development of the system, although giving some context on the major planning issues of the day. As the chapter comes closer to our present time, the discussion becomes briefer, as more detailed discussion of particular topics is picked up in the relevant thematic chapters.

Housing has always been a politically contested arena in the UK, because the questions of where we live, who we live with and how we live are inextricable from the pursuit of wider goals such as economic 'progress', the protection of rural landscapes and nationalistic imaginaries, and notions of which kinds of urban form are acceptable. A strong housing focus is also characteristic of the way urban redevelopment and 'regeneration' has been approached in the UK. One reason for this is that the pace of industrialisation left a legacy of poorly built flats and houses. Another is that the low incomes of the industrial working classes in the nineteenth century, combined with high demand for housing close to the key areas of work, often led to overcrowded, expensive and poorly maintained accommodation which deteriorated over time. The improvement and redevelopment of housing became a key concern for governments throughout the twentieth century, generating not only improvements in living standards but economic benefits, through increased domestic consumption and a healthier workforce, and giving rise to new cultural practices such as homemaking (Ravetz 1980).

Whilst a link between planning and urban areas – urban regeneration – is familiar, the idea of planning having a particular focus in rural areas is less common. Finding a book dealing with the topic of 'rural planning' is something of a challenge. However, much of the space we are planning for is by many definitions 'rural'1 and, as the quotation above highlights, rural communities have to deal with some distinct problems, and the application of planning policies in rural areas has raised a number of challenges. This chapter seeks to review the social, economic and environmental challenges and policy responses which have developed for the British countryside and along the way identify a number of important changes in emphasis of planning policy which have shaped the policy we have now.