The attitudes of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning towards blitzed cities in 1940s Britain

Abstract

German air raids during the Second World War damaged many British cities. Plymouth is one of the few cities in Britain that has persisted in its aim of comprehensively rebuilding the gutted city centre. It is also one of the few cities whose city centre plans gained approval during the 1940s from the Ministry responsible for town planning. Plymouth's plan was elaborated by Patrick Abercrombie, an eminent planner of the day, and Paton Watson, the city's engineer. Most other blitzed cities were not able to obtain a ministerial approval, and some ultimately abandoned their initial plans. This article considers the relationship between the government and Plymouth, especially from the viewpoint of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, established during the war. In examining the Plymouth case through the prism of the new Ministry and comparing it with the circumstances of other blitzed cities, this article shows that the attitudes of the Ministry officials in their relationships with blitzed cities were at fault, and that they were consequently unable to intervene in a sufficiently effective and timely way.

Revisioning and Rebuilding Britain’s War-Damaged Cities

“…Regardless of authorship, plans had to be approved by the ministry (Ministry of Works andBuildings, 1940-1943;Ministry of Town andCountry Planning, 1943-1951;Ministry of Housing and Local Government from 1951). Staff of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning's Planning Technique section, a wartime innovation, were extremely critical of many plans-including those produced by its own former staff (such as Thomas Sharp) or other eminent planners (such as Patrick Abercrombie; see Hasegawa, 2013b;Larkham, 2011).…”

“…(Gatliff, 1946) Although the ministry was generally dismissive of plans produced by people outside its own staff, this was an unusually vituperative comment (cf. Hasegawa, 2013b;Larkham, 2011). Faced with this opposition, and the intractable railway problems, the plan sank virtually without a trace, and indeed the city archives have retained few records of this expensive commission.…”

The Routledge handbook of planning history

“…The documentation has allowed historians to chart the development of new administrative structures, policy, and legislation Voldman 1983), in addition to revealing some surprising tensions between central and local authorities, and between individuals, sometimes resulting in explicit conflict (Lewis 2013). In the UK, for example, the Ministry's civil servants were very critical of almost all of the plans sent by local authorities for approval, irrespective of the eminence of the plan authors or the comprehensiveness of the plan (Larkham 2011;Hasegawa 2013).…”