because the individual commune or group of communes is ultimately charged with developing the actual land use legislation that governs changes in land uses it has to find a way to balance conflicting signals from higher levels of government with the pressures from the local populace to maintain or change the use of particular parcels of land typically rural communes do not have staff with strong competences in land use planning which makes this an even greater challenge while consultants can be hired to provide planning support this can also be problematic because while the consultant may understand the approach of the higher level in spatial planning they may lack a strong understanding of the local milieu and offer advice that is controversial locally