‘The exception to the rule’: exploring the exception and the exceptional in planning policy

This article explores exceptions to planning ‘rules’ as a specific form of discretion exercised by planners and decision makers. Theoretical conceptual ideas on rules rules, drawing principally administrative political making, are used examine the role exceptional circumstances in planning. analysis addresses interdependency between ‘rules’, which makers invited consider or circumstances, distinct forms regulation created using exceptions. The conclusions call for systematic that play different contexts systems.