The high luminosity performance of the LHC relies on storing, accelerating, and colliding beams with unprecedented intensities. Tiny fractions of the stored beam suffice to quench a super-conducti ng LHC magnet or even to destroy parts of the accelerators. The LHC collimation system is protects the accelerator against unavoidable regular and irregular beam loss. The collimator control system is required to accurately position the collimators with respect to the beam. The system, whilst needing to be extremely reliable, should be sufficiently flexible to cope with the various requirements in the different stages of the LHC operation cycle. This paper portrays the operational requirements and control use cases. It then describes the adopted controls architecture including a more detailed description of the various components of the system.