Organisational Change in Systems of Building Regulation and Control: Illustrations from the English Context

Marian Hawkesworth and Rob Imrie
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Marian Hawkesworth: School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, England
Rob Imrie: Department of Geography, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England

Environment and Planning B, 2009, vol. 36, issue 3, 552-567

Abstract: This paper evaluates organisational changes in English local authority building-control departments (BCD), in a context in which the adoption and development of management procedure, technique, and process, more commonly associated with corporate private-sector enterprises, are occurring. Referring to data based on twenty-nine interviews with building surveyors, we show that change in building control is complex and contradictory, and best thought of as the emergence of new capacities, competencies, and interactions (of regulation) both within BCD, and between BCD and new actors and agents. This includes the enlargement of the regulatory networks of BCD, through the use of external expert advisors, and by the formation of, sometimes unstable, partnerships in which BCD may work with each other and with clients of building-control services. Such partnerships and networks are part of a complexity of regulation, in which outcomes are not the products of any one professional, or actor, but part of a diversity of overlapping relations and interventions. Such relations, we argue, are part of a process that may undermine, even dismantle, the public provision of building-control services.

Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:36:y:2009:i:3:p:552-567

DOI: 10.1068/b34036

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