REBUILDING IN BRITAIN

Evening Star, Issue 25225, 12 July 1944, Page 4

REBUILDING IN BRITAIN

PLANNING BILL BEFORE HOUSE EXTENSIVE POWERS EMBODIED (British Official Wireless.) (Rec. 10 a.m.) RUGBY, July 11. The Town and Country Planning Bill, which aims at dealing with problems arising from rebuilding bombed and blasted areas, also the development of other land, came before the House of Commons today. The Minister of Town and Country Planning, Mr W. S. Morrison, moving the first reading, said: "It is necesr sary that land which has suffered very extensive war damage should be acquired by one local planning authority to enable it to be deveoped as a whole." It was also necessary to acquire at the same time land on which to accommodate those whom reconstruction might remove from another area. Powers to acquire land, if necessary by compulsion, must be conferred on local authorities. There must be a directive as to price to prevent speculative prices over those of 1939. There must be national assistance for those cities chosen by the enemy as targets. The main burden of rebuilding would be borne by private enterprise, but where it did not move quickly enough the planning authorities would have the power to do certain essential building. They would also have the power to rebuild those urban areas which suffered from bad lay-out or from the tooth of time.

Discussing the long-term urban problem, the Minister said: " Nothing can be worse for the preservation of the countryside than the process which has gone on too long of cities dying at their centre and spreading further and further into the green land."