ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on changes in the local economy and on local planning responses to changes during the 1980s. It demonstrates how local and strategic planning responded to economic development objectives and to a growing awareness of the land requirements of industry and the effect of development constraints. The chapter considers the impact of these considerations on the quantity of employment land allocated, its quality and location. It also looks at how planning policies responded to the need for economic diversification in rural areas and concludes by outlining some of the other property strategies or policy instruments, outside the planning process, which have been useful in facilitating the development of employment land. The traditional dependence on industries in which employment has been most susceptible to the processes of economic restructuring of the last two decades has particularly affected certain parts of the Cheshire-Wirral corridor.
