Milner, J. B.

English

University of New Mexico

Volume 6 
Issue 2 Spring 1966 
Spring 1966 
Cullingworth, J. B., Town and Country Planning in England and 
Wales 
J. B. Milner 
Recommended Citation 
J. B. Milner, Cullingworth, J. B., Town and Country Planning in England and Wales, 6 Nat. Resources J. 354 
(1966). 
Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol6/iss2/17 
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UNM Digital Repository. It has 
been accepted for inclusion in Natural Resources Journal by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For 
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Town and Counfry Planning in England and Wales
By
J. B. CULLINGWORTH
Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. 1964.
Pp. 301, $6.00
Within the limits of his 300 pages Professor Cullingworth has
produced a remarkably complete account of the English (and
Welsh) town and country planning function. The limitation of
length is significant when it is remembered that the statute govern-
ing planning itself takes 243 pages in the 1962 consolidation and
reenactment, including the fifteen schedules (10 & 11 Eliz. 2, C. 38).
Although Professor Cullingworth is a sociologist, he is Reader
in Urban Studies in the Department of Social and Economic Re-
search in the University of Glasgow, and his study of the planning
function shows a real appreciation of the administrative and legal as
well as the planning problems. His account will be welcomed by
North American scholars who want a broader picture than that
given by Profesor Mandelker in his excellent study of development
control, Green Belts and Urban Growth.
Two topics that are discussed at some length will be of partic-
ular interest to readers on this side of the Atlantic, and perhaps
especially in the United States. The first is the debate, constitutional
in the United States but "political" only in Britain, concerning com-
pensation for losses incurred as a result of planning measures. The
possible injustices of refusing compensation seems to me to be an
"inarticulate major premise" in many a North American planning
dispute, but it has been openly confronted (unsuccessfully) in Bri-
tain; the account in Chapter 6 of "The Problems of Land Values"
sets it in some perspective. There is reference to the Uthwatt Re-
port on Compensation and Betterment and some earlier attempts
to grapple with this problem, to the rise and fall of the development
charge introduced in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947;
and to the current proposals, soon, one supposes, to be realized in
some fashion by the Wilson government.
The second topic is treated in Chapter 3, which deals with "The
Role of the Central Government." England, together with Wales,
comprises an area roughly equal to that of the state of Georgia with
a population about three times that of New York. "Local" govern-
BOOK REFIEWS
ment has always had a close relationship with the central govern-
ment, and local planning measures are subject to a degree of central
control unheard of in the United States, though it would be taken for
granted in many provinces of Canada. Planning is mandatory and
a development plan must be approved by the Minister of Housing
and Local Government. Permission to develop land (about the
equivalent of a building permit in accordance with the zoning ordi-
nance) must be obtained from a local council but on refusal an ap-
peal lies to the Minister. The Minister exercises a number of other
controls and expresses his views in the form of orders, circulars, and
by indirect pressures administratively through his departmental
staff. Yet despite this high degree of centralization, planning over
a wider area than a county is no more apparent in England than
in the United States. Chapter 13 on "Regional Planning" begins
with the confession that "at present there is no machinery of
regional planning in this country."' The confession is followed by
a declaration of faith: "Nevertheless, there is a clear trend towards
regional thinking."'2 In the discussion that follows, economic analy-
sis and unemployment problems predominate over "planning," and
the two "regional" programs described are "first essays in compre-
hensive regional planning by central government."3 Nevertheless,
it is quite clear that regional planning is slowly coming into its own
in the United Kingdom and may perhaps move ahead of North
American efforts since the incentives in Britain appear to be very
powerful and the potential administrative areas so comparatively
small and densely populated.
Chapter 9 on "Planning for Leisure" also invites some compari-
son with North America, where some of the problems incurred in a
small country with a gross density of over 700 persons per square
mile are not dissimilar to problems in densely built up areas in the
United States. There is, of course, no escape on the island from
urban expansion and those responsible for the development of the
limited amounts of open space have to cater to the needs of large
populations. The Planning Director of the Peak Park Planning
Board once remarked that he had to consider the needs of sixteen
million people within a radius of fifty miles. Professor Cullingworth
turns to the report of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review
Commission for relevant American experience likely to provide
1. P. 258.
2. Ibid.
3. P. 266. (Emphasis added.)
APRIL, 1966]
NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL
some help in England and Wales. On the other end of the scale,
the densely populated London area is struggling to find four acres
of open space for each 1000 of population in the old London
County Council area and an additional three acres beyond the
county limits. For the time being a two and a half acre standard
had to do, and progress is being made. Between 1951 and 1960
London added 521 acres to its 8255 acres of open space.
Chapter 12 on "Urban Renewal" concentrates on housing, com-
prehensive redevelopment and traffic, undoubtedly three problems of
the highest importance in England and Wales, as well as in North
America. Of the six and a half million houses (about 45 % ) built
before 1914, two million are over 100 years old. Needless to say, the
standards of even 1914 fall far short of 1965 demands, even in
England and Wales, where there seems to be considerably less de-
mand for detached houses-which, indeed, might be literally im-
possible to build, given the real limits of land available. Professor
Cullingworth is something of a specialist in housing, having pre-
viously published Housing Needs and Planning Policy (1960), and
Housing in Transition (1963). He finds that the progress in hous-
ing to date "has not been encouraging." '4
The part on traffic provides Professor Cullingworth with an op-
portunity to comment on the widely applauded Traffic in Towns, the
so-called Buchanan Report, which he describes as "a masterly sur-
vey which surmounts the administrative separatism which has until
recently prevented the comprehensive co-ordination of the planning
and location of buildings on the one hand and the planning and
management of traffic on the other."5 This, despite the strong in-
fluence of central government. Professor Cullingworth, as a soci-
ologist-planner, is mildly critical of Buchanan. He makes "due
acknowledgment of the necessarily crude nature of the methods
and assumptions used," 6 but he seems to find the report a useful one
in many ways.
The short treatment of "comprehensive redevelopment" contrasts
strikingly with North America writings where the contributions
from the federal governments seem to be a primary concern. The
central government's financial contribution is apparently negligible;
the real concern is over procedural delays, which were less significant
in the immediate post-war period when the redevelopment was most
4. P. 246.
5. P. 255.
6. Ibid.
[VOL. 6
BOOK REVIEWS
likely to be undertaken by the municipality itself rather than by
private enterprise, which presently takes a much larger part.
The final Chapter on "The Planners and the Public" illustrates
another interesting difference from North America in the role of
the public as participants in the planning process. As a sociologist,
Professor Cullingworth deplores the lack of participation in Eng-
land and Wales. As he says, "In Britain there is a remarkable ac-
ceptance of and reliance on Government: the Americans are less
trusting and the curious result is a greater degree of 'grass-roots'
democracy." ' 7 It would take more than 300 pages to examine the
assumptions in those two propositions, but there is one specific area
of administration to which Professor Cullingworth refers that will
surprise most North Americans. In the area of what he calls "third
party" interests, the English and Welsh administration seems rather
severe, even to a Canadian, much less an American. Where a public
hearing is held in connection with an appeal to the Minister from
a refusal of planning (development) permission, an adjoining land-
owner has only a "very sensible administrative privilege" to appear
at the hearing conducted by the Minister's inspector, and no privil-
ege at all to appeal to the courts to challenge the Minister's deci-
sion.8 By contrast, one sometimes wonders whether land use deci-
sions that are capable of rational analysis are not, in North America,
settled by counting heads in a rather ill-designed and unofficial con-
stituency of sometimes highly emotional neighbors.
No attempt has been made to comment exhaustively on every
chapter in this excellent short account, but I have tried to indicate
areas of British experience that will make interesting and perhaps
instructive reading for North American studies of planning law and
administration. Cullingworth on Town and County Planning in
England and Wales should find a worthy place beside Haar, Heap,
and Mandelker on our shelves.
J. B. MILNER*
7. P. 274.
8. See Buxton v. Minister of Housing & Local Gov't, [1960] 3 Weekly L.R. 866.
0 Professor of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
APRIL, 1966"]


Cullingworth, J. B., Town and Country Planning in England and Wales

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