The abolition of the GLC will leave London in a confused mess. Naturally, we shall muddle through, somehow, we always do. (Tony Banks MP and Chair of the GLC 1986)
The Greater London Council (GLC) was established in 1965, following a Royal Commission set-up in 1957 under Sir Edward Herbert. Herbert concluded that local government in the Greater London review area failed the twin tests of ‘administrative efficacy’ and ‘representative health’. He called for a Council of Greater London and 52 London borough councils. The Metropolitan council – the GLC – was to be a new type of authority concentrating on strategic planning and the metropolitan infrastructure.
There was a strong political motive underlying the creation of the GLC. The old London County Council was a Labour Party fiefdom and had, arguably, been the testing ground for Labour Party policies. The very rapid expansion of London in the inter-war years meant the London County Council (LCC) no longer truly represented “London”. The new “outer London” of expanding suburban “villages” was predominantly Tory, making the GLC a potential Tory win. Nevertheless, there were opposing voices with several contiguous authorities, such as Epsom and Ewell, voting against becoming part of London.
The GLC was born with problems. It was set up as the successor to a whole range of bodies. It took functions and staff from the LCC and from the counties. As such it combined the new, pan London strategic role with a plethora of executive responsibilities, inherited from its predecessors. Its housing responsibilities were vast including special areas in inner London and the expanded new towns programme, decanting jobs and people from inner London, as well as managing the old LCC housing stock and taking forward new builds such as Ferry Lane in Tottenham.
It also inherited a range of transport responsibilities, parks and open spaces, waste, industry and office location and responsibility for things like tourism, town centres and retail. There was a considerable degree of overlap with the newly created “most purpose” boroughs (designed to be the minimum size for an education authority and, where possible, including a mix of areas) and an ongoing case of internal bureaucratic schizophrenia about strategic and executive roles.
In many ways, the GLC was a huge, Heath Robinson contraption – a vast administrative machine, with fingers in every pie and no clear strategic focus. It was a popular comment that the GLC managed to combine the very best and some of the worst aspects of local government. Added to which, mistakes made in drafting the original legislation, were to complicate matters. For example, the GLC was only able to deal with planning applications for retail over 250,000 sq ft. This was intended to be 25,000 sq ft but the “typo” remained.
“Arguably in order to perform that role effectively it needed the authority to override the boroughs and give binding direction on the boroughs’ own plans and on the planning applications they considered. But even the limited powers that the GLC possessed led it into corrosive dispute with the boroughs.”[1]
The GLC was
“either too weak to be effective or too powerful to be acceptable”.[2]
The GLC justified itself as a strategic authority – but what exactly was the definition of strategic?
The GLC was always resented by a number of predominantly Tory boroughs (led by Westminster, Bromley and Croydon) as being too powerful and by others as too weak and ineffective. By 1973 Conservative borough leaders were actively lobbying within the party for the abolition of the GLC and, in 1974 Geoffrey Finsberg, Hampstead MP and long-standing critic of the GLC, was appointed as Opposition spokesman for London affairs. One of his first tasks was to prepare proposals that would severely circumscribe the GLC’s powers or abolish it altogether.
Sir Horace Cutler, Conservative leader at the GLC since 1977, had been under considerable pressure to respond to the concerns of his borough colleagues and commissioned a fundamental review of the GLC from Sir Frank Marshall. The Marshall Report (1978) concluded that a metropolitan authority continued to be necessary because
“The total interest of London as a whole transcends that of its constituent parts, their local needs and individual aspirations.”
Marshall called for devolution from Whitehall to give the GLC a clearer and bigger strategic role. But the Marshall report “sank like a stone”,[3] opposed by the boroughs and ignored by central government.
Baroness Margret Thatcher (Prime Minister from 1979-1990) had two, opposite, views. While the GLC was under the control of Sir Horace Cutler, it was the jewel in the Tory local government crown, however, when the Labour party won the 1981 election and Ken Livingstone staged his much-anticipated “coup”, the GLC became the devil incarnate and in plain sight at the other end of Westminster Bridge.
The House of Lords ruling against the GLC’s signature Fares Fair policy (1981) created a broad front in favour of abolition including the Institute of Directors and the CBI. The City of Westminster proposed to Michael Heseltine (then Secretary of State for the Environment) abolition and the transfer of functions to the boroughs and formed a campaigning group – Westminster Against Reckless Spending (WARS) – to campaign against the GLC’s ‘alleged profligacy’.
In the summer of 1982, John Wheeler Tory MP for Paddington organised his fellow London Conservatives to press the case for abolition upon the government. Within the party itself a policy group on London had been set up, and it was here that “the GLC’s fate was effectively sealed”.[4] By January 1983, London’s leading Tory MPs were confident that abolition would be included in the coming general election manifesto. Yet Whitehall and the Cabinet “remained cool”. Senior Ministers, including Tom King and Michael Heseltine, generally were opposed to abolition.
When the draft manifesto was looked at by the Cabinet, the proposed abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties was not considered, and manifesto proposals for local government had yet to be tabled. Nevertheless, immediately after the meeting Margaret Thatcher met with two of her allies outside the Cabinet and drafted a passage for inclusion in the manifesto criticising the GLC as a ‘wasteful and unnecessary tier of government’ and giving an unequivocal commitment to abolish it.[5]
On 9 June 1983, the Conservatives won the general election and in October published a white paper ‘Streamlining the Cities’ for consultation. It portrayed the two-tier system in London and the metropolitan counties as ‘a recipe for conflict and uncertainty’. The GLC had been created during ‘the heyday of a certain fashion for strategic planning, the confidence in which now appears exaggerated’. There were some 2,000 submissions received in response and according to Tony Banks (MP and Chair of the GLC)
“not one from an independent or authoritative source was in support of GLC abolition. So embarrassed were Ministers by the overwhelmingly hostile reaction to their proposals that they refused to give details of the submissions or to lodge them in the House of Commons library” [6]
In September 1984, Kenneth Baker was appointed local government minister with responsibility for steering the main abolition legislation through parliament. When the Local Government Bill received its second reading in the Commons in December 1984, ministers were attacked by Tory backbencher opponents of abolition. There was cross-party support for attempts to replace the GLC and metropolitan counties with elected strategic bodies, a threat that the government was able to see off but with a severely reduced majority.
There were a number of Tories who were very much against abolition. Included amongst them was Bernard Brooke-Partridge, a former member of the old LCC and leading Tory GLC member who held a number of positions including chair of the Northeast London Planning Panel, who actively campaigned against abolition. Brooke-Partridge was the last Tory Chairman of the GLC in 1980-81. He made no secret of his opposition to the abolition of the GLC and was part of the campaign to oppose it. Among other things, he personally lobbied 300 Tory peers. He was a close friend of the Deputy Leader of the GLC Labour group, Illytd Harrington and no doubt was in regular contact with a number of Tory peers, including Lord Sandford.
As the Bill moved into the House of Lords, Baker appealed directly to the House of Lords not to vote for a directly elected London-wide authority. Between April and June 1985, the House of Lords debated the Bill at great length, discussing both its detail and its broad constitutional implications. The Lords passed several amendments to set up strategic authorities for functions such as waste disposal and traffic management which were rejected by the Commons. The proposal for a re-think on strategic planning was, however, a different matter.
The Reverend Lord Sandford, chair of the Standing Conference for London and the South-East Regional Planning (SERPLAN), moved an amendment early on in committee stage in the House of Lords:
Amendment no19[7] proposed that
“the London borough councils shall be required to establish a joint organisation for the purposes of achieving co-ordination and coherence in their planning policies and of enabling them jointly to participate in regional planning for the South of England as a whole.”
However, he had no intention of pressing it as it was a probing amendment, one designed to provoke debate. Lord Sandford argued that the amendment was designed to secure a debate of the future strategic planning in the Greater London area in the absence of any single body, elected or otherwise, covering the whole area. He had already written to the secretary of state Lord Elton, arguing that SERPLAN
“ believes that the fundamental requirement, for effective planning for the South East region and for the capital itself, is that Greater London should have a properly-constituted and representative body capable of taking and expressing a strategic view on land-use and transportation planning matters generally and on particular issues such as mineral planning…waste disposal, the enhancement of the environment and protection of the Green Belt. The essential characteristics of such a body are that it should be accountable, comprehensive – embracing all the London boroughs – and assured of resources sufficient to enable it to deploy an adequate and competent staff, able to gather and analyse data and to assist it in development of policy. Its functions would be to examine and advise on strategic issues of concern to Greater London, taking full account of the regional context; and to ensure that its findings were given due weight it would be necessary to place certain duties upon the London Boroughs, including a duty to consult with it, to have regard to its advice in the preparation of their unitary development plans and to indicate when appropriate why they have found it necessary to depart from their advice given”.
In that letter he argued that it was essential in the view of SERPLAN that arrangements should be given a statutory basis. SERPLAN remained of the view that a directly elected body would be the best solution, but
“at the very least the Secretary of State should be given power in the Bill to require the London Boroughs to form and maintain a joint body for strategic planning purposes on the lines we have described.”
While recognising the government’s preference for voluntary arrangements, SERPLAN had carefully considered whether joint working by the London Borough Councils without a statutory basis would produce what was needed. The letter went on to say
“However, we have no confidence that voluntary co-operation in this field would be as comprehensive or effective, dependent as it would be on full and continuing participation of all London Boroughs. It is clear that the London Boroughs find it extremely difficult in present circumstances to devise workable voluntary arrangements and there is no assurance that they will succeed in doing so.”
Were such a statutory body to be established, then there would be no need to set up a London planning commission of appointed planning experts, which was the government’s preferred way of seeking advice.
As debate continued, Lord Elton slowly warmed to the idea.
“There is no difference between us on the need for the boroughs themselves to play a proper role in regional planning for the south-east as a whole. I have already spoken about the strategic role of the Secretary of State and I stand by all I said, but I in no way dimmish the importance that I attribute to the contribution from the boroughs because there must be an input to the regional strategy. This is what my noble friend is advising me to arrange. There must be an input from the very local level of the boroughs.”[8]
However, he was keen not to impose upon the boroughs’ statutory arrangements without proper consultation with those authorities themselves. He undertook to consult with the London Borough Association (LBA) and the Association of London Authorities (ALA)[9] to see whether “they would wish to see formal arrangements of some suitable kind built into the bill to facilitate the degree of co-operation between them that we all consider desirable.”
Two and a half months later on 3 July at report stage Lord Elton, after consulting with the LBA (the ALA did not want to engage on the issue), came forward with an amendment designed to ‘provide suitable machinery’ for a strategic planning function for London. London was to have a statutory joint planning committee.
This was accepted by the Lords, though some Lords sought to have this arrangement extended across the metropolitan councils. This amendment, along with others, went back to the House of Commons for further consideration on 8 July.
In the Commons debate on the Lords’ amendment there was support for the joint planning committee, but opposition MPs introduced two amendments to extend the joint committee arrangement to the six metropolitan counties and also for the London joint planning committee to have the power to issue guidance to which borough councils must have regard in preparing their unitary development plans. The government opposed both these amendments. The former on the grounds that London was a special case given the number of planning authorities it contained and the impact of its development on the surrounding areas, which was greater and more complex than that of any other conurbation.
The secretary of state for the environment, Rt Hon Patrick Jenkin MP summed up the short debate as follows:
“I was grateful for the welcome given by the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr Cartwright (SDP)) to the amendment accepted in another place…the purpose of the joint committee would be to consider matters of common interest relating to the planning and development of greater London and to inform the Secretary of State and neighbouring planning authorities of its views. It is important to note that the joint committee will not itself be a planning authority but an advisory committee, as the original proposed London planning commission would have been.”
“…The London planning commission as an appointed expert body did not find much favour in another place. Instead, there was felt to be a need to co-ordinate the borough’s approach to planning in and around London. The proposal for a joint committee has the support of the London Boroughs Associations and of SERPLAN. The government are satisfied that the change made by the other place is an improvement and I hope the House will accept the relevant Lords amendments.”[10]
Which they did.
Further debate on the final version of the Bill was restricted and the government used its majority to defeat any Lords’ amendments it disagreed with.[11] On 16 July 1985, the bill received Royal Assent and became law. It required the London boroughs and the City of London to set up a joint committee to make preparations for the abolition of the GLC before 1 September 1985. This was chaired by Sir Peter Bowness, leader of Croydon Council. The London Co-ordinating Committee was given a number of legal duties which included preparations to transfer GLC services to individual boroughs and the establishment of joint committees to undertake various functions. This included the establishment of an “advisory body that not in any way constitutes a strategic planning authority was to be set up no later than 1 April 1986.” Its main tasks were:
In other words, the Joint Planning Committee was mainly to be concerned with strategic planning and development issues that affected the whole of London or at least two boroughs. This included the relationship of London with the rest of the south-east region. It did however have a responsibility for individual planning applications that were deemed to have an impact beyond the borough boundary, such as a retail centre or incinerator, and many councillors who served on LPAC were often primarily concerned with such applications where they affected their borough.[12] Much of its early work was spent considering such applications and giving advice to government.
At midnight on 31 March 1986, as fireworks exploded over the South Bank, the fire brigade band played Elgar’s Nimrod and as its flag was lowered, the Greater London Council ceased to exist and 97 years of continuous London-wide government came to an end.
London governance was left in the hands of ministers, the 32 boroughs (and the City) and a melange of joint arrangements. Decision making became highly fragmented, with powers drifting to Whitehall[14]. In 1988 leading academics Michael Hebbert and Tony Travers published “The London Government Handbook” which sought to map the new governance arrangements which by then had time to settle. They described over 60 separate bodies and over 30 different ways of dividing up the Greater London area for administrative purposes. Whitehall departments obtained a
“vast amount of extra powers over London, estimated as from 40 to 123 in total, to initiate, to guide, to control, to direct, to monitor, to approve, to be consulted and in default to execute”.[15]
The boroughs picked up some services, such as highways and looking after parks and opens spaces. Some services were picked up by quangos specially created for the purpose, such as the London Residuary Body which was tasked to sell off GLC assets, including the iconic County Hall. Others went to existing bodies such as English Heritage. A number were allocated to new London-wide local government bodies such as the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority. Smaller groups of boroughs came together to cover functions such as research and intelligence.
One of the more influential voluntary groups created after the abolition of the GLC was Vision for London (VfL). Various activists, entrepreneurs and journalists (George Nicholson, Nicholas Falk, Rob Cowan) felt that London needed some focal point for understanding the many developments happening all over the capital. Set up as a voluntary organisation with a charitable constitution run by Esther Caplin it created a steering group of 27 organisations representing communities, planners, local authorities, business, developers, architects, media, arts, research and education and sought to link them together through events, newsletters and reports.
The first meeting of the Joint Planning Committee (JPC) was held on 20 November 1985 at Westminster City Hall. Councillor Randall (Con) was elected chairman, with Cllr Coatman (Con) as Vice Chair and Cllr Williams (Lab) as deputy. Initially, three boroughs Hammersmith and Fulham, Southwark and Havering put themselves forward to be the lead borough and provide a home for the committee. A steering group, which Cllr Randall also chaired, was set up to prepare papers for full committee.
The subsequent meeting was held on 20 January 1986 and the steering group proposed various recommendations as to next steps. There were lead borough reports as members sought to influence how the committee should operate, given its remit. The committee then voted 17 to 14 in favour of Havering being the lead borough. The steering group was disbanded and reports started to be presented by the chief planner/coordinating officer.
In the early meetings of the JPC in late 1985 and early 1986, Southwark represented the ALA (and the London Strategic Policy Unit), while Havering represented the LBA. These lead boroughs presented arguments to the JPC as to how it should be run and what its philosophy should be. Southwark pressed for a large administrative team to support the JPC; Havering wanted a more modest approach. There were clear differences in terms of how different political factions viewed the JPC, with Southwark arguing that the committee should take on a
“central, albeit advisory, policy development role which would be of use in the preparation of Unitary Development Plans and would be an efficient and cost-effective way of sharing experience and developing good practice. It would effectively constitute a continuation of the co-ordinated approach which the London Planning Forum has initiated and which has found support from the great majority of Boroughs. Areas to be covered could include the economy and employment, housing land availability, retailing trends and policies, ecology, environment policy (pollution, urban landscape, energy, vacant and derelict land, waste and minerals), the Green Belt, equality of opportunity and transport and land use issues such as the use of the rivers, the road network, public transport, the needs of pedestrians and traffic generation.”[16]
Havering put forward a different approach arguing that in setting up the joint planning committee, central government had made clear that this was not intended in any way to constitute a strategic planning authority. Its task was to consider and advise the London boroughs and the City on matters of common interest, to inform the secretary of state of the views of the boroughs on any such matters as to which he has requested their advice and to inform local planning authorities outside of London as to the views of the London boroughs on any matters of common concern. The Havering paper recognised that the committee needed to agree on what matters required a strategic approach and on which therefore required strategic guidance from the secretary of state but was unwilling to spell any out at this stage. The committee would also have to decide on the level of engagement with the secretary of state that was necessary – this could range from drafting a list of strategic matters, to submitting a full draft of the guidance it would wish to see the secretary of state issue.[17]
Following the local elections of May 1986, LPAC, as it was now called, had a delicate political balance, made up as it was of 15 Labour members, 14 Conservative members, three SDP-Lib Dem Alliance members and one Independent (the City).
The committee, which initially met six times a year, was chaired by an Alliance member representing Richmond – Cllr Sally Hamwee. Cllr Peter Broadbent was deputy chairman and Leader of the Labour Group, Cllr Bob Coatman was vice-chairman and Leader of the Conservative Group. Because the more important decisions (those involving money) required a two-thirds majority, both Labour and Conservative groups could exercise a potential veto. Baroness Hamwee’s recollections are that there was a core of members who regularly turned up to meetings and were actively engaged, though most members were only really interested in matters that affected their own boroughs. Baroness Hamwee worked hard to identify core issues where agreement could be easily reached and so keep people together as she was acutely aware of the fragility of consensus given the numbers. She also lamented that there was over the years disappointingly little interaction with relevant ministers.
The committee was advised, in turn, by a panel made up of chief officers from the London boroughs. The panel–nominated by various professional communities – contained six borough planners, three engineers or surveyors, two chief executives and one finance officer.
LPAC’s new home was in Eastern House, Romford, in suburban Havering on the eastern fringe of London. It was seen by staff and commentators as a brutal way of downplaying its relevance to London’s governance as it made the involvement of members and officers from elsewhere difficult. Baroness Hamwee had to travel over 30 miles across London from Richmond. It could also be seen as a political move to keep LPAC out of central London, so there was no sense that it was becoming a “London government” in waiting. However, this choice of venue may have actually been due to the involvement of Bernard Brook-Partridge, as from 1967 to 1973 he was the member for Havering. From 1973 to 1985 he represented Romford. It may well be that he was able to convince his “home borough” to take the lead responsibility for LPAC, thus explaining its somewhat eccentric location.
Despite the travel difficulties, staff were pretty nimble and worked round the inconvenience and liaised with particular effectiveness with the Department of Environment and Transport, the London local authority associations and other centrally located agencies. They were supported by boroughs which let them use their offices for meetings to cut down on the travel. Staff didn’t get any financial help with their public transport fares if they had already bought a season ticket, but in time the senior officers did get outer London leased car allowances!
LPAC was funded by the London local authorities contributing on a per capita basis. The committee had a budget of £589,000 in 1987/8 which went up to £1m in 1988/9. The committee had an establishment of 23 in October 1988[18]
Staff accounted for 50% of its costs, rents, rates and overheads for 30% and the remaining 20%of the LPAC’s income was channelled straight though as London’s contribution to SERPLAN.
The first chief planner was Edmund Lewis (ex GLC), who unfortunately died in late 1986. Robin Clement (also ex GLC), his deputy, was happy to have Steve Grigson (also ex GLC) take over as interim lead until John Popper (ex-Islington deputy chief planner) was appointed in 1987. Popper stayed until the first strategic advice was finalised in 1988 and was then replaced by Martin Simmons (ex-Kent County Council assistant chief planner) who stayed the course into the early GLA.
The rest of the first management team was Chris Berry (ex-LB Sutton and prospective Brighton Lib Dem MP) initially responsible for transport and shopping/town centres; Robin Clement covered environment and development control and John Lett (ex-Southwark), was initially appointed as research lead but reassigned to cover most land use policy. There was also a chief admin officer Graham Day who was assistant secretary until May 1988.
Recruitment of planning professionals was quite problematic in the early days because LPAC wasn’t expected to have much of a shelf life. This was partly because of the location and partly because people didn’t know what to expect, as it was a new sort of organisation and exercising a very different function to the GLC strategic planning role.
Other key appointments were Giles Dolphin (ex-Lambeth) who effectively took over Robin’s technical duties on the environment and development control, Keith Gardener (ex-GLC) who took on Chris Berry’s transport responsibilities and Chris Donovan and Amer Hirmis who both worked on land use. Relations between John Popper and Robin Clement could be fraught, but Robin had great interpersonal skills, especially with the Chair Sally Hamwee.
In July 1986 Lord Elton wrote to LPAC seeking LPAC’s advice on what should be in the government’s strategic guidance for London. The government’s position was that planning intervention should cover a short list of policies for land use.
“Guidance should cover only those matters which cannot be dealt with by any one borough and should be limited to land use matters which are the proper concern of the planning system.”
“As you know on 19 June the Secretary of State issued strategic guidance for the South East region as a whole. This was in response to the Regional Statement prepared by SERPLAN. Within London, of course, the current strategic document is the Greater London Development Plan (GLDP) which was approved in 1976. The proposed alterations to the GLDP were treated as having been withdrawn as from 1 April 1986 though no doubt much of the background work which was undertaken will continue to be useful to us. The responsibility for providing strategic guidance now rests with the Secretary of State and it is important to move forward on this as quickly as possible. The guidance should not be as detailed as the GLDP but should rather take the form of a fairly brief document which will provide a basis for the preparation of the Unitary Development Plan and enable the Secretary of State to issue the necessary commencement orders.”[19]
The letter requested a response within a year.
At its 30 July 1986 meeting, LPAC tasked its steering group to consider what LPAC’s response should be to Lord Elton’s letter. In the meantime, all boroughs were contacted to elicit their opinions. However, due to the summer recess most councils were unable to make a formal response.
In preparing their paper for LPAC’s consideration, the steering group considered, alongside the Lord Elton letter, an officer paper and a paper prepared by Southwark and the London Strategic Policy Unit. The paper from the LSPU challenged Lord Elton on a number of issues, including his failure to consult in advance on the arrangements for the preparation of strategic guidance and the proposed scope of the guidance as laid out in his own departmental circular (30/85). “The letter’s view that guidance should be restricted to land use matters is unhelpful in practice and wrong in law. The Local Government Act 1985 requires UDPs, besides the development and use of land, to include statements on measures for the improvement of the physical environment and the management of traffic. Instead of taking the opportunity to show some positive new thinking and to make planning of greater relevance to the acknowledged problems of London in the 1980s and the 1990s the letter takes a disappointingly limited view. These concerns are reinforced by the fact that the letter refers to the idea that guidance should take the form of a “fairly brief document”. Past experience suggests that brevity in policy documents can be counter-productive as well as expensive and counter-productive.”[20]
The LPAC steering group recommended that the response to the Lord Elton letter should notify the minister of state that in its view the letter
“does not constitute the ‘agenda’ for strategic guidance as it did not comply with the provisions of Planning Circular 30/85 and seeks his assurance that the consultation envisaged in the Circular before the publication of the formal ‘agenda’”.
The LPAC steering group set out an “Alternative Agenda for Strategic Guidance” which would more accurately capture the complex inter-relationships between land use and the environment, between land use and transport, between land use and the environment. It argued that government guidance should also “at least include a broad indication of the resources situation”. In other words, what investment was necessary to tackle the deteriorating condition of London’s housing stock and the increasing obsolescence of much of the capital’s aging infrastructure. The group wanted strategic guidance to cover a much wider range of objectives than the five mentioned in the Lord Elton letter – it set out 12 including economy and employment, transport, minerals.
At the 25 November 1986 meeting, LPAC discussed the responses from the boroughs to the Lord Elton letter. 27 boroughs had replied by then. 19 responses had member sign-off and the others were indicative responses. In general terms, both inner and outer London boroughs supported the LPAC steering group’s proposed agenda with only Bromley supporting the minister’s letter without comment.
LPAC’s response was sent to the secretary of state and following a meeting at the Department of Environment, the minister, William Waldegrave wrote a letter setting out a compromise position. The minister endorsed the comprehensive planning objections put forward by LPAC as “a useful starting point”, tacitly moving on from the earlier and more limited objectives suggested by his predecessor Lord Elton in the summer.
There was agreement too that priority should be given to policies for London’s housing, industry and commerce, transport and green belt – all to be put together within one year. Once progress had been made on the headline topics, there would be scope for assessment of the other subjects to extend the coverage of the guidance.
The agreed objectives to be covered by the guidance were as follows:
Housing
Economy and employment
Transport
Equality of opportunity
Shopping
Green belt and the environment
Inner London
Outer London
East and west imbalances
Central London
Thames-side
Vacant and derelict land
Resources
LPAC felt that it had now reached agreement on the production of strategic planning guidance for London and to have secured a significant victory in determining how government should intervene to shape London’s development.
London experienced an unprecedented rate of geographical economic restructuring and decline following the second world war. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, London’s share of total employment in the UK fell rapidly. Unemployment grew steadily and there was a substantial outflow of people and jobs. This outflow was encouraged by the new towns, overspill housing and central and regional decentralisation policies.
Trade and the economic balance of power was shifting to the west, in particular around Heathrow. That trend continued through the collapse of London’s manufacturing base from the late 1960s on.
“Closures happened first and worst in east London, in the older industrial areas that had grown up around the river. West London was last to be affected but it was inexorably ravaged in its turn. London’s manufacturing workforce was 1.29 million strong in 1966, already a drop from 1.43 million just five years before. By 1974 it had fallen to 940,00, by 1989 435,000 and by 1999 274,000. In the thirty years from 1966, manufacturing in London lost nearly 80 per cent of its jobs. By the early 1980s every part of London was affected. Areas like Park Royal and the Lea Valley which had developed as industrial areas mainly in the 1920s and 1930s and which were still gaining jobs in the 1950s saw the practical end of their industrial existence by 1985.”[21]
Every sector of manufacturing was affected – furniture, cars, vehicle parts, engineering firms, food processing, names like Hoover, Firestone Tyres, British Leyland left; “the litany of closures was endless”.[22]
By the mid-1970s, service industries were also affected by decline, and decentralisation policies played a key role.
“In 1964 doing something to stop the growth of offices in London was a top political priority. The [government] required the grant of office development permits before new offices could be built in London; and permits proved hard to get. The Location of Office Bureau (LOB) had been set up in April 1964 to move office jobs out of London. It was still going strong despite the fears for London in 1977. By 1978 the LOB had helped move over 150,000 office jobs from central London, although about a third had gone only as far as Croydon, Hounslow ad Romford.”[23]
Between 1961 and 1981, London lost at least 750,000 jobs[24] of which close to 700,000 were in manufacturing. Between 1971 and 1975, one in twenty manufacturing jobs in London was lost and this was followed by a slightly worse rate of industrial job losses between 1976-81 and since 1981. London’s population fell in 1981 to its lowest point of the century at just under 6,700,000.
But as LPAC began its work, London was at a turning point. The end of decentralisation policies in the late 1970s and the new political focus on urban regeneration changed the climate for investment. Government policies on deregulation supported growth in financial, business and property services. The population started to re-bound and because of London’s international links, it benefitted from the emergence of the global economy from the recession of the early 1980s and retailing and tourism grew markedly.
Conscious of the mistakes of post-war planners (poorly designed high-rise estates, the motorway box proposals and the destruction of an array of London’s historical assets, such as the Euston Arch), LPAC wanted to do things differently. Its work would be rooted in the analysis of Londoners’ needs, be prepared democratically and integrate development, transport and the environment; its goal was a ‘liveable’ city as much as a dynamic, regional growth hub.
There followed a period of intense research, discussion and consultation as LPAC worked at pace to produce documents that would carry weight and influence central government. Five working groups were set up:
They were to meet roughly once every two weeks. But the pressure of work was intense. Boroughs’ officers had to take on these additional responsibilities while working on their day job. LPAC members were warned that inevitable staffing issues could scupper any one of the working groups, as happened when Newham had to pull out of the working group on retail. At the initial working group meetings, definition and scope of tasks were discussed and then decisions were taken as to how the substantive issues should be addressed, often through sub-groups. The working parties initially started preparing topic papers in March 1987 and were requested to have papers ready by June/July 1987. Such a timetable was completely unrealistic. Their brief was not wholly clear or explicit and was certainly liable to various interpretations. The membership was determined by the boroughs and some dragged their feet. By June, only the Housing and Retailing Working Group were able to demonstrate sufficient progress to warrant presentation of their work to the committee in September as scheduled. All working groups were therefore given longer to prepare their topic papers. Nevertheless, by September, most were beginning to show some useful results.
In many areas, work carried over from the revisions to the Greater London Development Plan and the aim was to pull all this together in a “Policy Options and Issues” paper which would be used for wider consultation. But preparation of the paper was not plain sailing; there were tensions between the working groups staffed by borough officers and the central unit that supported LPAC, and some boroughs felt out of the loop. When the final document was presented to LPAC in January 1988, there was dissent from a group of ALA boroughs led by Camden and including Ealing, Greenwich, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark.
A long list of objections was set out, including that it hadn’t been consulted on with the boroughs or the LPAC Topic Working Groups. Its so-called “new approach” to planning was derided as being “top-down”, with an over-emphasis on existing policy at a national level. Its perception of public participation was flawed and it had a narrow view of community. The ALA group of boroughs commented that
“The document harps on about the limited potential of LPAC and of planning in general to influence London’s development. It is almost as if the authors were trying to discourage people from responding to the document.”
It added
“The document is not clear or concise enough for public participation…nor rigorous or comprehensive enough for the technical reader. It is full of jargon, patronising and assertions. Finally, the document cannot be said to be “Strategic” at all. It lacks an overall vision of the future development of London.”
The report was noted and discussion moved on, the ALA Group did not have the votes to force the issue and scupper the document. [25]
Published in January 1988, 5,000 copies of “Policy Issues and Choices” were printed for distribution across the boroughs and to other interested parties. A Greater London Conference was held in February with four smaller sub-regional conferences to follow. Preparation of the draft strategic advice was written in parallel to the analysis of the consultation responses. Comments came in through March and April, but because of the tight deadline, comments from Camden, Hackney, Hillingdon and Sutton were not included, nor were additions that had been made to the responses from Barnet, Haringey, Kingston and Southwark.
Drawing on consultation responses officers raced to produce draft strategic advice. Published in June 1988 it comprised two documents: a 160-page report (which LPAC admitted was much longer than anticipated and included some overlap in different chapters) and a 15 page summary which were, again, considered for further public consultation. Officers reported to LPAC that the principal difficulty in drafting both documents had been reconciling the wish to avoid broad platitudes with the time and resources that had been available during that last year for the research and policy formulation needed to develop ‘authoritative’ strategic advice. A further difficulty given the timetable and members heavy commitments had been the lack of opportunity to discuss policy issues and choices prior to drafting policy. Both these had combined to make some of the policies more fragile than others. Some major judgements had, officers admitted, been made, for instance, in the transport field which ought to be the subject of considerable further and more detailed analysis.
In Committee, there was disquiet as to how the documents had been pulled together at speed, which meant that some boroughs felt that their comments on the “Policy Issues and Choices” document had not been reflected in the draft strategic advice document and that they had not had sufficient time to comment on the document itself.
Members were divided as to whether the committee should give detailed consideration to the content of the draft strategic advice at the meeting or to note it as a discussion document and agree to it going to public consultation without detailed amendment. The matter was put to the vote and a motion that detailed amendments be taken at the meeting was lost. The Labour Group wished it to be recorded that they were in favour of the motion. But in the end, it was agreed unanimously that the draft strategic advice be issued as a discussion document and that the three group leaders prepare statements to be included in a foreword, noting their groups differing opinions on the contents of the document. Consultation with member authorities, statutory and non-statutory bodies and members of the public took place between June and September.
The document was, however, far too large to be submitted to government. Staff raced to produce a shortened version for members to sign off. However, political differences finally boiled over and on 14 October Bob Coatman Vice Chairman and leader of the Conservative group wrote to John Popper to say that the final version as drafted was unacceptable to Conservative members on the Committee. He argued that much of the report strayed far beyond LPAC’s statutory duties, that a number of strategic issues were not adequately addressed and that many locally orientated issues were considered in detail. But there was more. Coatman noted that these comments would come as no surprise to Popper as he and his Group had been critical of the direction the Committee had taken since the day it was established. As drafted the Conservative group would not endorse the draft and were to consider producing their own advice to go to the Secretary of State. As a final flourish he stated that the Conservative Group had always considered that in order to draft strategic advice a staff of no more than 12 would have sufficed and that these numbers would be substantially reduced once advice had been submitted. There was just five days before the full LPAC meeting which was supposed to sign-off the document.
What happened next remains a bit of a mystery. Staff were convinced that the advice would be rejected. It was said that letters of redundancy had been drafted. The chief planner secured another job. An officer from the DoE attended the 19 October LPAC meeting fully expecting to see LPAC implode. However, behind the scenes Coatman must have been hard at work; picking off recalcitrant Conservative colleagues through persuasion and skilful re-drafting. Coatman is unlikely to have wanted LPAC to fail and Sally Hamwee would have worked hard to support him.
Suffice to say that the scope of the document was significantly reduced so that all proposals were presented concisely and clearly related to land use planning, transportation and the environment. The emphasis on ‘going for growth’, was more explicitly conditioned on the accompanying requirements for increased rail investment, traffic restraint and the modernisation of London’s infrastructure.
The report noted the difficulties of synthesising different views from the boroughs but argued that the authors had tried to incorporate the requirements of as many boroughs and other respondents as possible. “It has not always produced a clear and satisfactory result, particularly in the employment and retail fields.”
On housing, the document “responds to the criticisms about being overly prescriptive on the provision of low-cost housing at the borough level.”
Furthermore, “where member Authorities had passed Committee resolutions supporting a lower figure than that suggested earlier by borough officers or by consultants the lower figures have been included.”
When it came to the sign-off meeting on 19 October each section was passed unanimously much to the surprise and relief of staff and to the chagrin of the DoE staffer.
Published in October 1988, the Advice was 76 pages long, included 133 recommendations and a long list of supporting documents. Following publication, John Popper, the chief planning officer, who had brought the document to fruition resigned to be replaced by Martin Simmons, previously at Kent County Council.
The Government’s draft “Strategic Planning Guidance for London” was published barely five months later, in March 1989. Taking out the annexes, it was just 14 pages long. It was primarily designed to provide a framework for development control. Government was clear that London’s future depended on the initiative and energy of the private sector and individual citizens and not on the imposition of a master plan. The guidance therefore dealt with matters that were directly related to the use and development of land.
LPAC produced a comprehensive assessment of the draft strategic guidance and how it differed from its own strategic advice. The report noted that while the draft guidance broadly covered the main areas of interest as set out in the strategic advice, there were a number of major matters where policy was omitted or actively rejected.
LPAC was particularly concerned that its strategic advice had set out policies that were appropriate for guidance, some for guidance and UDPs, some for UDPs only and that guidance needed to recognise this and indicate which policies sat within these categories. LPAC wanted a statement in the guidance as to which policies, while not appropriate for guidance, were commended to the boroughs as a basis for the preparation of and coordination of UDPS.
LPAC also argued that the draft planning guidance was substantially incapable of implementation both as a development control tool and because a number of its policies are either loosely drafted, internally in conflict or incompatible with other government planning policy as expressed in legislation, law or regulation.
“Draft Guidance appears to view planning as a negative process and takes a very narrow view of its function ‘to facilitate development while protecting the local environment.’”[26]
LPAC concluded that
“it is a matter of some concern that despite the substantial work by the Committee, by its Support Unit, by Borough Officers individually and in Working Parties, by Consultants, and by other organisations including officers of the Department of the Environment, Department of Transport and widespread public and other consultations, the Draft Guidance does not fully reflect the breadth, depth or balance of the Committee’s advice on strategic policy to the Secretary of State.”[27]
In a parliamentary debate on 28th July 1988, ministers welcomed LPAC’s input but refused to shift on the key concerns LPAC had expressed. The minister argued that UDPs needed to be started quickly and stated that it was the government’s view that land use planning was not a means for tackling every problem that London had – for example access to housing and skills mismatch was, in their view, an area where planning could make only a limited contribution. Planning conditions could not normally be used to impose restrictions on tenancy and occupancy and the government did not support policies that sought to do so – guidance was not a masterplan for London. Government resisted attempts by Simon Hughes MP (Lib Dem) who called for the guidance not to be issued at that point, given the concerns expressed. The strategic guidance was issued later that day.
A press release from LPAC upon publication of the strategic guidance summed up the committee’s frustrations: Cllr Sally Hamwee, then chair of LPAC, stated that
“The Government has failed London…the Guidance is a pale shadow of what we had hope it would be. The policies we agreed last October were technically sound and carefully balanced. We consulted widely and overcame our political differences because we had a real vision of what London could become in the 1990s…we believe that strategic land use planning can make a major contribution to solving London’s problems”.
While Cllr Peter Broadbent (Deputy Chairman) stated that
“the Guidance bears the dead hand of Nicholas Ridley…it is his last bequest to London.”
“The Guidance is technically flawed, far too narrowly focused and will provide a field day for lawyers. It creates more problems than it solves. The Secretary of State’s decisions bring the whole planning process into disrepute.”
The LPAC meeting of 19 September noted the publication of the strategic guidance and set out the changes that had be made to the draft following consultation. The officer report stated that
“The Committee regrets that so little account was taken of LPAC’s carefully considered and unanimous response to the Draft Guidance. That there are a number of matters about which the Committee is concerned and/or on which clarification is need and the Committee requests a meeting with the Secretary of State to discuss these matters”.
LPAC set out its concerns, including the poor quality of the consultation process and that requests for meetings and for engagement and joint working had been rejected.
“The inscrutability of the drafting and form of the Department of the Environment’s consultations made effective response difficult. Taken overall there is no doubt that the Department of the Environment’s consultations were less than satisfactory.”
Despite the majority of the 400 consultation responses to the draft guidance received by government broadly supporting LPAC’s view registering disappointment about detailed policies and the format adopted, changes made were largely to do with updating and correcting errors.
LPAC was left to consider if a meeting with the minister would allow them the opportunity to seek clarification on various issues and how in discussing and inputting into SERPLAN’s regional strategy there might be an opportunity for LPAC’s priority policies to be reviewed, extended and carried forward. But given the government’s intransigence, prospects seemed gloomy.
It was time for a change of tack and a focus on London’s transport system would provide a focus for LPAC’s efforts to re-shape London.
From the Local Government Act 1985
S-5 Joint planning committee for Greater London.
5 Joint planning committee for Greater London.
(1) The local planning authorities in Greater London shall not later than the abolition date establish a joint committee to discharge the functions mentioned in subsection (2) below.
(2) The joint committee shall—
(a ) consider and advise those authorities on matters of common interest relating to the planning and development of Greater London;
(b ) inform the Secretary of State of the views of those authorities concerning such matters including any such matters as to which he has requested their advice;
(c ) inform the local planning authorities for areas in the vicinity of Greater London, or any body on which those authorities and the local planning authorities in Greater London are represented, of the views of the local planning authorities in Greater London concerning any matters of common interest relating to the planning and development of Greater London and those areas;
and the committee may, if it thinks fit, contribute towards the expenses of any such body as is mentioned in paragraph (c )above.
(3) The expenses of the joint committee which have been incurred with the approval of at least two-thirds of the local planning authorities in Greater London shall be defrayed by those authorities in such proportions as they may decide or, in default of a decision by them, as the Secretary of State may determine.
(4) In this section references to the local planning authorities in Greater London are to the authorities which are the local planning authorities in Greater London for the purposes of Part II of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 or section 4 above.
[1] Pimlott and Rao (2001), Governing London, Oxford University Press p31
[2] Op.cit quote from K. Young
[3] Op.cit Pimlott and Rao p37
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Greater London Council – HC Deb 27 March 1986 vol 94 cc1100-8
[7] Hansard 30 April 1985, p219-228
[8] Ibid.
[9] Until 1983 the LBA represented the interests of all the London boroughs. However, in the run-up to the abolition of the GLC a number of Labour boroughs left, and together with the GLC set up an alternative representative body, the ALA.
[10] Hansard, Local Government Bill 8 July 1985 766
[11] https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1985-07-08/debates/b30d2f48-0a67-48b0-b085-ee6c432e721c/ResearchAndCollectionOfInformation?highlight=local%20government%20bill#contribution-12590077-dd3c-4a17-b3c7-a62a9471e90d
[12] LPAC had no remit over the Docklands.
[13] See Appendix 1
[14] Pimlott and Rao (2002), Governing London, Oxford University Press, p45
[15] Hebbert and Travers (1988), The London Government Handbook, Cassell, p7
[16] LB Southwark, Report to the Joint Planning Committee 20-11-85
[17] LB Havering, Report to the Joint Planning Committee 20-11-85
[18] Op.cit. Pimlott and Rao p78
[19] Letter from Lord Elton to LPAC’s Chair 24-07-1986, The London Archive
[20] Strategic Guidance in London: A response to Lord Elton’s Agenda letter. Paper by the Head of Planning Policy Group (LSPC) for LPAC October 1986.
[21] Jerry White (2001), London in the 20th century, Vintage Books, p206
[22] Ibid.
[23] Op.cit p207
[24] LPAC (June 1988) Draft Strategic Planning Advice for London, LPAC paragraph 2.3
[25] ALA boroughs comments on the draft version of “Policy Issues and Choices”, LPAC meeting January 1988
[26] LPAC report “LPAC’ response to the draft Strategic Planning Guidance”. May 1988 The London Archive
[27] Op.cit.
The story of how bold, strategic thinking helped shape a changing London. From transport and housing to green space and global ambition, this is where policy met purpose – with lasting effects and lessons still relevant today.
