The Layfield Report on the Greater London Development Plan

Abstract

The development plans that the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act required local authorities to produce were essentially what most people still think of as That is, there were some maps describing the status quo, and others showing the changes that were planned to happen by some future target year. Any material was background to the maps. The plan had to be submitted to the Minister for approval. Over the years the 1947 system was found to have severe drawbacks.' There were long delays in approving the plans, which meant that they were not infrequently obsolete by the time they were approved. The delays were partly the result of the administrative difficulty of discussing planning principles and policies through the scrutiny of local maps. The Minister was supposed to be interested in approving, or correcting, local authorities' strategies, not the detail shewn on maps; yet often central and local government became bogged down in discussion of such detail. The 1968 Town and Country Planning Act replaced development plans by what were called In them, local authorities were to state their objectives, present alternative strategies for their future development, and evaluate the alternative strategies in relation to those objectives. It was hoped the Minister would find it easier to appraise their policies than he had their maps. The test for including a within a structure plan was whether the particular policy was likely to have an important bearing on the structure of the town or on the general pattern of its growth and renewal.2 The structure plan's scope was catholic. Moreover, no maps whatever were required. The town plan has become a written statement which may, if convenient, be illustrated by sketch-maps. Because of this metamorphosis, it now makes sense to consider structure plans as urban economic plans. The selection and evaluation of alternatives is an economic process; and therefore much of the content of structure plans, however expressed, is recognizable as raising economic issues. The Greater London Development Plan (GLDP) itself is an anomaly. Begun when the GLC was formed, its origins ante-dated the 1968 Act.