So we will set schools free from top-down targets and a culture of inspection and instead put in place accountability arrangements that are more transparent and sharper in their focus on underperformance.

Coalition ministers still deny that they are deploying the very kind of top-down targets that they criticise the last Labour government for having used so freely.

While these SHLAAs have been ditched by the current government as being top-down targets, so they may not be a material consideration in planning terms, but at least the planners will have at some stage thought the sites were developable.

A third suggestion is that autistic individuals may have stronger top-down target excitation processing and stronger distractor inhibition processing than controls.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto promised that new social enterprises would be created to deliver NHS services, that all types of providers - NHS, voluntary, or independent sector - would be free to deliver, the scrapping central, top-down targets, and cutting back on unnecessary administrative costs .

Why headline goals have taken over from top-down targets 4.

Ministers decided that the caseload had to be reduced by a certain amount and the reform process was driven by this top-down target.

It is clear that top-down targets do not build homes - they have just led to the lowest peacetime house building rates since 1924, and have fuelled resentment in the planning process that has slowed everything down.

Governments and aid agencies have made commitments at the leadership level, but for the moment have done little more than pursuing top-down, aggregate targets.

I don't want to produce a sort of top-down target, you know: eighteen weeks to set up a social enterprise, tick that box, okay, move on, let's go on to the next thing.