Town Studies (Hansard, 26 July 1972)

§ Mr. Peter Walker

I am glad to say that the County Borough Council of Oldham, Rotherham and Sunderland have accepted my invitation to take part in studies for the preparation of urban guidelines, and arrangements are going forward to commission consultants.

The purpose of these studies is to help local authorities develop a total approach to the improvement of the urban environment, looking at their towns as a whole. They will be related primarily to the functions for which the new district councils will be responsible from April, 1974. We hope to produce guidance of practical value on inter-relationship between activities and on using available resources to the best effect. I am particularly anxious that we should address ourselves to local authority members—and the public—as much as to local government officers. I hope that we shall receive the reports of the studies in the spring of next year.

As the House knows, I propose that the other three studies should be into the 320W environmental problems of inner city areas. I am inviting the Birmingham City Council, the Liverpool City Council and the Council of the London Borough of Lambeth to join with us in these studies.

In these studies we shall be looking for possible courses of action on the environmental problems of inner city areas. This will involve practical work on the ground, of which my Department will bear the major part of the cost. We shall try to look at the needs of the study areas as a whole from the point of view of the people living in them and to derive lessons on powers, resources and techniques. The work would extend over several years. The first stage will be to commission project reports which will set out proposals for the practical work in the main studies. We should have these project reports by about the end of the year.

In order that the results of these studies will have an immediate effect on ministerial decision-taking I have decided that each of the studies will be chaired by a Minister from my Department. I have allocated the chairmanship of the studies in the following way:

Birmingham—Secretary of State for the Environment.

Lambeth—The Minister for Housing and Construction.

Liverpool—The Minister for Local Government and Development.

Oldham—The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Eyre).

Rotherham—The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths).

Sunderland—The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mr. Speed).

I am grateful to the other local authorities which wrote to offer their co-operation, and regret that I could not bring them all in. It is of course my intention that the outcome of these studies should be useful to local authorities generally.