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It's not fair to hound the Chairman. Councils cannot make these things happen, only the people with the money can do that. But councils can get in the way. Thankfully DDC is better than many, at least since the dark days when the McArthur Glen application was rejected.
The problem is that our politicians create the impression that they are in control, which they reinforce by claiming credit for things that have happened when they are seeking re-election.
But it's an illusion. They didn't really achieve those results, the men with the money did. Therefore it's not fair to blame DDC for failing to bring about the DTIZ et al, because they don't have the capacity to do it. They do, however, have the ability to process planning applications with greater dispatch than they actually do; while the politicians on the council generally have a can-do attitude, the officers seem always to be looking for obstacles.
Councillors always tell me that DDC isn't officer-led. To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies: 'They would, wouldn't they?' With the labyrinth of legislation that hog-ties us all nowadays, which councillors can never hope to master, it could never be otherwise.