Abstract; The most common definition of planning involves the deliberate achievement of some kind of predetermined outcome and the process required to achieve it. This would normally require the monitoring of the means necessary to achieve the desired ends to determine if they were effective. The determination of the relationship between the intention and the outcome would therefore help to establish the certainty there might be in the process itself. An area where one kind of certainty can be identified, relates to the achievement of the outcomes desired by the statements in planning documents (usually non-statutory Development Control Plans (DCPs) in NSW) which describe what is to be achieved, often in detail. Here it can be seen that the eventual outcome can fall well short of the original intention whose aims may be compromised during the process of implementation. There are many reasons for this but it might be considered a failure of the planning process operated by local government planners where what is intended in the plan does not materialise. This paper examines an ongoing development where the result differs from that described in the plan suggesting that even close to its completion, the process can result in something different from that anticipated suggesting that greater care is required both in the definition of the aims of the process and in the management of the procedures applied to achieve them.