TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING

HC Deb 21 December 1955 vol 547 cc2053-63

1.14 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Nicolson (Bournemouth, East and Christchurch)

In view of the lack of time, I shall cut out much more than half of what I intended to say, and I hope that hon. Members will not regard the shortness of my speech as diminishing in any way from the importance of the subject I wish to raise.

Six months ago, the Architectural Review published a special issue about the increasing defacement of our town and countryside by ill-planned, ill-designed, ill-conceived, and ill-executed building and suburban sprawl masquerading under the name of development. The book was by Ian Nairn; its title, "Outrage." It exploded like a rocket in the faces of Government Departments, local authorities, and owners and occupiers of private land. This House would itself be guilty of the charges of desecration which it brings if we were to scoff at its evidence or ignore its moral.

What was the argument of that book? Let its own introductory words speak for themselves: If what is called development is allowed to multiply at the present rate, then by the end of the century Great Britain will consist of isolated oases of preserved monuments in a desert of wire, concrete roads, cosy plots and bungalows. There will be no distinction between town and country… The end of Southampton will look like the beginning of Carlisle: the parts in between will look like the end of Carlisle or the beginning of Southampton. The whole book, and its many hundreds of illustrations, substantiate that opening attack. If hon. Members think it exaggerated, let them read the book and then go out into their constituencies and look around them with the new eyes which its perusal will have given them. Let them mentally strip a familiar street or favourite landscape of its accretions during the last ten or twenty years and then consider whether, without them, both would not be improved. That is not because these things are of themselves ugly; it is not because all modern methods of production, distribution and exchange are necessarily vile. It is because they are wrongly sited and badly planned.

The book must speak for itself, as I have no time to summarise it. Wherever one goes, in town, in suburb or in countryside, one sees the grappling arms of concrete stretching out to embrace the fields without drawing in any of their freshness. One sees ugly lamp standards, badly designed housing estates, and the Service Departments, particularly the Air Ministry and the Army, allow their sprawling camps and abandoned airfields to desecrate what remains of the countryside. If this process continues, we shall be overwhelmed by what the Architectural Review called "Subtopia." We shall find that it will be too late to save what we have come to regard as the unchanging and unchangeable character of England.

I wish to ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, whom we all congratulate on his promotion, what view his Ministry takes of this outrage? What powers does he have and how does he use them? Does he use planning consent, which is the instrument of authority, to prevent desecration? At what point is a decision made which will affect the whole appearance of an old market street or a stretch of countryside? Is not the decision made by the borough or the county engineer, who, if he ever thinks of the scenic value at all, thinks of it last, after he has considered all the byelaws, the traffic and other regulations of his department? He is left with no time at all—perhaps no wish at all—to consider whether the thing should be built in that shape and in that place. Those who have had the power to prevent these things have not cared, and those who have cared have not had the power to prevent them.

It is for that reason that I and several of my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite put down a Motion, which now stands upon the Order Paper, which I should like to be read in conjunction with this debate. In the Motion, we suggest that the Government should set up a council of civic design on the lines of the Council of Industrial Design, which could give advice to those public or private bodies who are not too proud to mistrust their own judgment.

I do not want it to be thought that I am suggesting that such a body should have powers of compulsion. I do not wish to set up a Ministry of Fine Arts, or to assume that any group of people can constitute themselves into arbiters of national elegance. The council, whose constitution I suggest, would simply extend the work which could have been done by the Royal Fine Art Commission, a body so distinguished in its membership, so modest in its ambition, so shy of publicity, so misnamed, so starved of money, that it has no more hope of resisting the onrush of "Subtopia" than Canute had of resisting the onrush of the waves.

Let this council of civic design set up its headquarters in London, and maintain a permanent exhibition, to which all those interested in good planning and design can go for advice and illustration. There are some things, even in the changeable world of taste, which are wrong absolutely, and too many of them have found their way into our villages and towns, so that our eyes have become dulled by surrender to the second rate. This debate should have taken place ten years ago.

Now that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government is about to leave that Ministry for another—

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

He has left it.

Mr. Nicolson

—let him leave on his desk for his successor the OFFICIAL REPORT of this short debate, having marked with red ink all the relevant passages attacking, as the Architectural Review has attacked, this outrage on our land. Let us not wait another decade before something constructive, or, as we put it in our Motion to which I have referred, something creative, is done to save the countryside and towns.

1.21 p.m.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

The hon. Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson) has placed us all under a debt to him by bringing this matter forward today. I am sorry that he should be so pessimistic about what has happened and what may happen in the future. I regret very much his attack on the county and borough engineers, who, very often, have to be reminded that they are the servants and not the masters of the local authorities.

For the local authorities themselves I would say that I do not agree that the housing estates which have been created since the last war have, by and large, deserved the criticisms which the hon. Member made. If we compare what housing authorities have done since 1945 with what private enterprise, the nobility and gentry and industrialists, did in the last years of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, I think one can certainly say that public enterprise is well vindicated by what it has done.

I was in part responsible for the administration of what I believe to be the most beautiful county in England—but there are many claims to that distinction, and if anybody else likes to claim it for his county I hope he will agree, no matter where he comes from, that my county of Surrey can be regarded as the second. As I say, I had some responsibility for its administration, so I know the difficulties which were created in the north-eastern part of Surrey before local government had powers to control development and eyesores. Those can be compared with what the London County Council did with its St. Helier estate between the wars. That was a London County Council of whose political complexion I found myself in violent dislike, but it set a standard which, I am glad to note, other local authorities in the county have followed in their post-war developments.

I admit there are many things now going on that one regrets, but I doubt whether what the hon. Member has suggested will be sufficient to effect an improvement. I have noticed in some recent cases that under the present Administration some things which local authorities would have prevented have, on appeal, been allowed by the Ministry. There have been cases in which the Minister of Housing and Local Government has over-ruled the local planning authority when it has desired to control development and to frustrate bad development. He has done so when the cases have been considered on appeal to him.

Everybody who has been concerned with administration in this matter, whether at the local or the national level, knows that one is always brought up against the hardship that proper development would mean for the owners of small pieces of land. One can quite easily ruin what is now a fine street, or has the makings of a fine street in it, by allowing in it one patch of shoddy development. I hope that the local authorities will have from the Minister of Housing and Local Government rather more sympathy when they have to incur local odium by resisting what they regard as unsuitable and unsightly development, and when appeals are made to the Minister, who gives the final decision.

I congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary on his promotion. In this matter he has gone to the right place, though, unfortunately, there is no offence in the criminal law when people uglify their surroundings. When I moved from the Ministry of Education to the Home Office I said that I was like a doctor turned undertaker, because I buried the mistakes of my previous occupation. The hon. Gentleman, I regret, will have no opportunity of doing that.

I hope that I speak for the whole House when I say that all the matters brought up by the hon. Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch give us concern. I am quite certain of this, that it is only by a rising standard of public opinion in support of local authorities and Ministers when they take a strong and reasonable course in these matters that any improvement can be ultimately effected. I distrust bodies like the Royal Fine Art Commission. It wanted to put four kiosks on Hampton Court Bridge, one of the most beautiful bridges that has been erected in this century. It was felt that the sight of some ugly building might be avoided if one looked one way at those kiosks. However, if one looked the other way one found that Hampton Court itself was obscured, and Hampton Court is far more beautiful, after all, than any kiosk that any fine art commission could possibly devise on the end of a bridge.

There are various bodies concerned with this matter of planning and development. There is the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. It is quite right to preserve many an old building which gives us a sense of what the country looked like in a time of gracious living. There is the Historic Buildings Council, on which I have the honour to serve on the nomination of the Minister of Works. I hope that by my drawing attention to this it will not be found that I thus have an office of profit under the Crown, although there is an hon. Member on the other side of the House, the hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Vane), who can be paired with me. There is the Georgian Group, and there are other bodies. I do not think they should be able to exercise any compulsion on local authorities or on Ministers. I am quite sure that they would be better advised to direct their energies towards educating public opinion rather than criticising local government officers and bodies.

Mr. Nicolson

The right hon. Gentleman really is misrepresenting me. Having cut out three-quarters of my speech, I yet had time to say that I was not proposing any powers of compulsion at all. The right hon. Gentleman must be familiar with the Council of Industrial Design. Let him take that as a model for my council, for things out-of-doors, whereas the Council deals only with things indoors.

Mr. Ede

I was supporting the hon. Member's plea and then he talks to me in that indignant way. I tremble to think what would happen to me if the hon. Member had delivered the other three-quarters of his speech. I try to support him, with moderate enthusiasm, and then he tries to suggest that I am opposing him.

I want to make it quite clear that I do not want to see either the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, with regard to development, or the Ministry of Transport, with regard to bridges, asking these bodies to step in to deal with these local authorities who generally employ quite competent people for their major designs. I sincerely hope that public opinion will be steadily built up so that local authorities and Government Departments will realise that they have a trust which they have to discharge when these developments take place.

1.31 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. W. F. Deedes)

I agree with the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) that we are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson) for initiating this debate and for bringing to everybody's notice this very stimulating document entitled "Outrage." I must correct my hon. Friend in one particular —the document did not explode like a rocket in my own Ministry. Nevertheless, it has stimulated a good deal of discussion. Its approach is intellectual on a difficult subject, and its main thrust is directed at neither town nor country but at the kind of twilight areas in between and, what the document depicts with great effect, misplaced amenities.

The "blurb" of the document refers to the question of priority of claims. I think that in this island of 50 million people and 50 million acres the task of settling the priorities between the conflicting claims upon these acres is not only one of my right hon. Friend's most fascinating functions, but also quite the hardest and heaviest which falls to him.

I want to meet my hon. Friend as far as I can. Perhaps I should first attempt to define responsibility. I will not attempt a summary of the Town and Country Planning Acts, the broad effect of which he knows. For the local application of the principles of these Acts we look, and not in vain, to local planning authorities, for whom all local authorities are, as it were, sub-agents. Powers may or may not be delegated by the planning authority to the local authorities.

These Acts are not comprehensive. There are a good many elements referred to in "Outrage" which give concern, but which are not wholly covered by the provisions of the Acts. For example, there must be a clash between the demands of defence and the interests of amenities. When that happens the Government try to satisfy themselves that the defence project is urgently needed, or cannot be met in some other way. The Post Office takes care over its plans for local post offices, and the planning authorities take a lively interest in the sites. As to the countryside, it is an open question whether telegraph poles enhance or distract from the appearance of lonely country roads. These are examples which are outside the terms of the planning Acts.

There is very little new development going forward on the railways at the moment, but such development needs the approval of the planning authorities. Whether some of the London stations would be improved by complete or partial removal is a matter of dispute. After all, a number of people are in support of St. Pancras Station. The closing of branch lines, which some people might regard as the removal of an eyesore, does not seem to be welcomed by others, and people become sentimental about the chugging of trains among our hills and valleys. Works connected with the provision of electricity supplies are partly outside supervision of the Act. As far as possible, care is taken in the routing of overhead lines and the siting of power stations, but there are bound to be some difficulty cases.

There is the aftermath of war damage. These sites are gradually being cleared in the towns by rebuilding, but in the countryside there is unquestionably a great deal of untidiness and of now unwanted war works. My right hon. Friend is prepared to give financial help towards total or partial restoration where he is satisfied that the damage to amenities is so great that it is in the national interest to remove the cause. Planning authorities have certain powers to deal with these cases. There are other examples of matters which do not come within the framework of the planning Acts and within the purview of the planning authorities, to whom we look for the effective implementation of those Acts.

I share with the right hon. Member for South Shields the feeling that it is wrong to be too pessimistic and to suggest that nothing has been achieved. There are in "Outrage" passages which lead one to the darkest possible pessimism about the whole outlook for this country, but I do not think that that is quite right. The post-war decade compares very favourably with the inter-war years, for example, in the prevention of ribbon development and sporadic building, which undoubtedly the later Town Planning Acts have effected. The Green Belt has been more strictly regarded than some people are ready to believe, and my right hon. Friend has quite recently issued some very clear and fresh guidance to local authorities on the subject.

Again, there is the policy designed to check sprawl, which is one of the great enemies in this matter, by means of overspill schemes. I do not want to embark on that theme. I should be out of order if I did so. There are opportunities for discussing that policy under another Measure which is now before the House, but it is fair to say that the checking of sprawl is one of the major roads towards what my hon. Friend the Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch seeks to achieve.

We hear much of what is permitted. Photographs of examples are reproduced in "Outrage," but nothing is heard of projects denied by planning authorities, often in the teeth of local protests frequently supported by hon. Members of this House. There are in particular the petrol stations. We are so often told that a petrol station is a means by which Mr. So-and-So earns his living and how outrageous it is to deny the erection of a petrol station which a county authority wishes to prevent being built.

My right hon. Friend is considering a council of civic design or something equivalent to what my hon. Friend has mentioned, and no doubt will have something to say about it in future. There is a responsibility upon a great many people besides my right hon. Friend and the planning authorities. "Outrage" itself recognises this. I quote again from the "blurb": A quick, effective change of heart can only come about through pressure of public opinion… I do not think that anyone would disagree with that. It is fatuous to pretend that the crusade can only lie with the local authorities.

In this respect the citizen has much greater power than he perhaps realises, first in agitating locally against outrages, which he can do either alone or in conjunction with the many voluntary societies which exist for doing that sort of thing and, secondly, simply in acting socially. In saying that, I am thinking particularly of the appalling litter in our towns and countryside, which suggests much scope for improvement by the individual.

I stress this because there must clearly be a limit—I hope that my hon. Friend will accept this—beyond which authority cannot go in controlling, forbidding and outlawing individual designs. It is usually said that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government does not too little but too much in the way of controlling and forbidding. It is not easy to hold a central course. There is no hon. Member who has not at one time had a constituent enraged by the decision of a planning authority which has denied him doing something that he wanted to do. A few of us have experienced the complaints of third parties who seek to restrain someone else from development. I should have said that the first category was far more numerous than the second.

What I have now to say bears very much on the theme of "Outrage." To a degree which we have never previously experienced in this island, industry, particularly in the shape of factories, has become to a great many of our cities and towns a symbol of civic pride. That is not surprising in view of the contribution which we expect those factories to make to our national well-being and our livelihood. Nor is it a situation which ought to be really disturbing to the authors of "Outrage" because many of the new factories in their layout and design are models of modem are hitecture and express the spirit and the character of our times perhaps more effectively, though I do not wish to make invidious comparisons, than some of our civic architecture. It is in their siting and what they bring in their train that there is cause for anxiety and—I agree with my hon. Friend—scope for more imaginative thought.

I should like to stress the rather peculiar relations—I say "peculiar" in the best sense—which exist between Whitehall and the town hall. Everybody believes in local government autonomy until the local authority does something to which they object, and then they ask my right hon. Friend to quash it. Broadly speaking, we do not "direct." We can, of course, guide in such matters as these, but too much guidance defeats its own end, merely adding to the mass of paper which descends on the desks of local authority officials.

In such guidance, it is important that we should say not only what should not be done but what should be done. I hope that "Outrage" may produce a companion volume in the future which will show a rather more constructive approach to these problems, showing not only what is outrageous but also what is desirable. While I admire the volume, I think it paints the prospect in rather sombre colours, and that carries the danger that many may feel that the situation is now past praying for. After reading some of it, one might be forgiven for concluding that. I consider that that is very far from true. I believe there is still very much which is good—some of it is post-war creation—and that it is far from being swamped by what is awful.

Our safeguard in this matter is vigilance, and that rôle should be regarded not as the prerogative of my right hon. Friend or the local authorities, but as the responsibility of all.