The Layfield Report was the culmination of the Greater London Development Plan Inquiry, which – at the time, and until about 2005 – was the biggest public inquiry in UK history. The inquiry was chaired by Frank Layfield and hence the resulting report took his name.
Policy background
To a certain extent, the GLDP Inquiry was horribly timed. It was hugely concerned with the GLC’s Primary Road Network, but between the start of the inquiry and the publication of the resulting report, the world had changed and urban roadbuilding was being viewed very differently by politicians and the civil service.
For example, in February 1973, talk within the civil service was all about rethinking urban transport investment. A confidential minute was sent during that month by one JF Slater, discussing the Second Report from the Expenditure Committee on Urban Transport Planning. It calls for promotion of public transport, restraint on private car use, a cease-fire on all urban road schemes not already at contract stage, and shifting urban roads out of the DOE’s Highways Division1.
Government policy regarding the GLDP
Whitehall was understandably very cautious about how to handle the extremely contentious subject of the Primary Road Network, especially given the rapidly shifting sands around urban roadbuilding.
A minute from 8 February 1973 sets the tone.
…endorsement of the need for an inner Ringway, without committal to the line, is as far as the Government should go.
Treasury Minute from D.M. Thompson to Mr Slater and Mr Howard, 8 February 19732
Elsewhere in the Treasury records of this time is a very telling remark, in a private minute, about the reaction to the final publication of the GLDP. Caught between the protests of the roads lobby, who opposed the abandonment of R1 and R2, and the protests from the environmental lobby, who opposed the retention of the North Circular and R3, one civil servant wearily noted that “we shall have to listen to a noisy dialogue of the deaf”3.
References
- “London motorway box: network of primary roads planned by Greater London Council (GLC)” held at T_319/2655 ↩︎
- ibid. ↩︎
- ibid. ↩︎