Abstract
This chapter focuses on the 1940–1944 period, and deals with the administrative developments related to the formulation of the reconstruction machinery and its effects in establishing the central planning authority . Emphasis is given on the Barlow, Scott and Uthwatt Reports which recommended the decentralisation or dispersal of both the industry and the industrial population, and the control of urban and agricultural land. The issue of the establishment of a central planning authority was one of the most important contained in the Barlow Commission’s report. As an outcome, the new Ministry of Town and Country Planning was established, gathering to itself all central town planning powers, responsibility for legislation and the civil servants previously concerned with planning.
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Notes
- 1.
More than 2Â years before the actual outbreak of the war between Britain and Germany on 3 September 1939; that is, some months later than the first air raids on naval targets in the Firth of Forth , Orkney and Shetland in October and November 1939 (Baker 1978, p. 13).
- 2.
Lord Reith had been appointed Minister for Works and Buildings in September 1940. In December 1940, he submitted a memorandum to the War Cabinet about the inadequacies of the pre-war planning system together with a proposal for the basic objectives and principles of post-war planning machinery (Essex and Brayshay 2007, p. 422).
- 3.
Lord Justice Scott was chairman of the Acquisition of Land Committee , 1917–1919, whose reports led to the Acquisition of Land (Compensation) Act , and the Agricultural Organisation Society, 1917–1922, whilst he was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (Anonymous 1942a, p. 98).
- 4.
Uthwatt was experienced in dealing with knotty problems connected with angles of light, rights of way and the like. He also practiced privately at that time and his services were in great demand, as his ability to understand the law on Taxation was unsurpassed (Anonymous 1942c, p. 162).
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Marmaras, E.V. (2015). The Urban Reconstruction Machinery Issue. In: Planning London for the Post-War Era 1945-1960. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07647-8_5
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