Contrebis 2019 v37 LANCASTER AND MORECAMBE REGIONAL PLANNING SCHEME (1927) Gordon Clark Abstract This paper reviews the Regional Planning Scheme for Lancaster, Morecambe and the surrounding area that was published in 1927 during a period of major economic and cultural changes and when the profession of town planning was in its infancy. Introduction Traditionally we think that town planning started after 1947 when the Town and Country Planning Act was passed. In fact it was Part II of the Housing, Town Planning &c Act of 1909 that first empowered – but did not compel – local authorities to make town plans (Bentley and Pointon Taylor 1911). These early plans focused on housing and on ensuring that new houses were sanitary. It examined their design and ventilation, road widths and adequate connections to municipal drains and sewers. Section 43 of the Act banned new back-to-back housing. However, the 1909 Act was hamstrung by limited finance to meet potential compensation claims by property owners, and also by local-authority indifference and inertia, limited powers and slowness in plan compilation and approval – partial criticisms of the subsequent Housing, Town Planning &c Act in 1919 (Megarry 1962). It was not until the Town Planning Act of 1925 that town planning was separated from housing concerns and became a professional activity in its own right, staffed by the members of the newly emerging Town Planning Institute (Royal Town Planning Institute n.d.). It is against this national background that in 1924 a Joint Town Planning Committee was set up to prepare a ‘Regional Planning Scheme’ for the wider Lancaster area under powers in the 1919 Act (s42). The area had a population in 1921 of 77,328 – it was 142,500 in 2017. The Scheme was ‘Regional’ to distinguish it from the more detailed local schemes in the five authorities that combined to form the Joint Committee – Lancaster Municipal Borough, Morecambe Municipal Borough, Heysham Urban District, Carnforth Urban District and Lancaster Rural District. Together they covered the area of the present-day Lancaster City Council that was established in 1974. The Scheme was approved in 1926 and published in 1927 (Forshaw 1927 and Endnote 1). By the standards of modern planning documents it was very concise, just 60 pages and two fold-out maps. Patrick Abercrombie, one of the ‘fathers’ of British town planning and then at Liverpool University, wrote a Foreword. The Plan focused on two areas – communications and a basic system of land-use zoning. At that time such regional planning for these topics was novel. Communications The section on communications had little to say about railways. The local network was then much more extensive than it is today with stations to Glasson Dock; at Bay Horse, Galgate, Hest Bank and Bolton-le-Sands; and up the Lune valley (Nuttall and Rawlings 1980). The Report noted that ‘...the opportunities for railway development in this field seem now to have disappeared.’ (Forshaw 1927, 31) and the cut-backs locally before and after the Beeching Report (1963) validate that judgment. Buses were the preferred mode of local public transport: ‘...the accessibility of the Region as a result of its motor-bus services, is remarkably good.’ (Forshaw, 1927, 30). The major focus was on roads. A few years earlier, Lancaster and Morecambe boroughs had united to build what are now Morecambe Road (A589; see Endnote 2) and Broadway, opened in two stages in 1922 and 1923 to cater for the rapid growth in car ownership, including car-borne holiday- 34 Contrebis 2019 v37 makers to Morecambe (Forshaw 1927, 20). The coastal road from Morecambe to Hest Bank (A5105) opened in 1933. Many other new or enhanced road schemes were proposed, broadly grouped into circumferential and radial roads (Forshaw 1927, 15–27). Among the circumferential roads were one from Glasson eastwards to Galgate and Quernmore and then north to Caton; and another from Halton via Slyne to Hest Bank. There would also be a route around Carnforth from Hest Bank via the Kellets and Yealands to Silverdale. There were also to be radial roads such as improvements to the Carnforth, Silverdale and Arnside link and a new route to Heysham that avoided Morecambe. The proposed route for this link was to have been west of the new Bay Gateway (A683), closer to the eastern edge of the built-up area of south Morecambe and Heysham. The justification for this new road – removing from the busy streets of Morecambe the growing road-based traffic to Heysham Harbour – was similar to that used for the Bay Gateway 80 years later. Although there was some data collection on traffic flows, the evidence base for these proposals was weak in terms of flows and traffic speeds, and there was limited recognition of construction costs let alone cost-benefit analysis in even its simplest form. On surer ground was the identification of bottlenecks that needed easing, such as the bridge over the River Conder at Thurnham, the skew bridge at Galgate on the A6 and congestion on Skerton Bridge, the only road crossing of the River Lune in Lancaster. The Thurnham and Galgate issues remain unresolved in 2019 but recent proposals for a new Junction 33A west from the M6 to the A6 near Lancaster University may bring relief to those in Galgate. The solution proposed for congestion on Skerton Bridge was to widen it to four lanes, probably cheaper than a complete new bridge but questionable in conservation terms (Endnote 3). Nonetheless a plan for its widening was approved in July 1939 and shelved (permanently, as it turned out) in September on the outbreak of war (Lancaster Guardian A and B) The local solution to congestion on Skerton Bridge came 45 years later in 1972 when Greyhound Bridge was converted from railway to road use. Traffic within Lancaster had already become an issue, with all north-south traffic between the A6 at Penny Street Bridge and Skerton Bridge being funnelled through the town centre – ‘traffic impeded by narrow streets, difficult gradients and unexpected turns’ (Forshaw 1927, 47). The discussion of solutions in the Report is interesting. The possibility of using King Street, China Street and Bridge Lane as part of a one-way route was dismissed on cost grounds due to the need to build a new bridge near the line of the former medieval bridge, and height differences between the Lancaster and Skerton riverbanks. Concerns were also voiced about a busy new road in the ‘quiet neighbourhood of the old town’ (Forshaw 1927, 48). Eastern and western by-passes around the city centre were also dismissed. The western one was summarily rejected without explanation. ‘The steep gradients to the immediate East of the town will not allow of the construction of a bye-pass within reasonable distance of the centre of the Borough and even if it were possible, it is not considered that such an undertaking would be desirable or in the interests of the Borough.’ (Forshaw 1927, 16). Nonetheless, discussions of various western and eastern inner by-pass routes continued into the 1980s with land reserved for an eastern route as a series of car parks. The Report’s preferred solution was road widening in the town centre. Three options were given. Two schemes involved widening Thurnham Street, Great John Street and North Road followed by two alternative approaches north to Skerton Bridge. The third option would have required the widening of Penny Street, Cheapside and North Road for north-bound traffic and the widening of Thurnham Street and Great John Street for south-bound traffic. The widening of these streets would have meant the demolition of the buildings along one side and rebuilding set further back from a wider road. This was the solution to the narrowness of China Lane/Street when it was widened in 1895, just 30 years before this report was written. The heritage loss of buildings was not mentioned 35 Contrebis 2019 v37 as a problem, but cost was. The proposals were seen as being spread over the next 50 years. Splitting north-bound and south-bound traffic happened in 1972 with the present one-way system, but by then the M6 around Lancaster had been open for 12 years and so the one-way system had to cope with only local traffic. The impression one gets reading the report is of an exaggerated sense of how much new road construction would be needed to cope with more road traffic. It was not appreciated how much extra capacity could be obtained by better road management. There was some sense of needing to cost schemes but the effects of the severe cutbacks in public expenditure after 1922 (the ‘Geddes Axe’) did not seem to have affected this Report written in 1925 with its plethora of ring roads, radial roads and by-passes. There were few qualms about demolishing Georgian or Victorian buildings. One should note that some of the new approaches to Skerton Bridge from the south would remove what the map on p49 labelled ‘Insanitary Areas’. This designation (i.e. slums) was used in many cities until the 1960s to justify demolitions for new housing and urban motorways. Land-use zoning The other novel feature of the plan was how it began a process of designating areas for particular land uses. The fold-out maps at the back of the Report show the built-up areas, and areas to be reserved for new housing, agriculture, industry and open spaces. Lancaster The main concern for Lancaster was the question of road traffic (see above). After that, the issue was how to separate residential and industrial development.