Catalogue description Records of Regional Offices and Committees of Ministry of Town and Country Planning and successors

Regional planning officers were appointed by the Minister of Works and Planning in October 1942, and they became the heads of the ten regional offices established by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in England and Wales. Greater London was dealt with by a headquarters division. In 1946 the regional planning officers were renamed regional controllers. The main functions of regional offices were to assist local authorities in the discharge of their planning functions and to keep headquarters informed of regional and local conditions.

They also attempted to reconcile the plans of all government departments affecting land use at regional level by contacts with regional officers of other departments, especially those of the Board of Trade concerned with the distribution of industry under the Distribution of Industry Acts 1945 and 1950. They also dealt at regional level with work delegated or referred from headquarters.

Much of the co-ordinating work of the regional offices was carried out through regional physical planning committees, which regional controllers chaired. They were set up in each of the former civil defence regions following a conference of regional planning officers in 1946. They comprised representatives of other government departments in the regions, and they kept under review the fundamental planning problems of the regions as they affected land use and the settlement of population.

They dealt with development proposals of major importance, excluding schemes dealt with by the distribution of industry panels, which affected the land use interests of different departments. The committees were under the central direction of an Interdepartmental Physical Planning Committee.

On its formation in 1951 the Ministry of Housing and Local Government took over the nine English regional offices and the Welsh office. The offices continued to carry out their existing planning functions together with duties under the national housebuilding programme formerly the responsibility of the Ministry of Health.

Regional offices were headed by principal regional officers with supporting professional, executive and clerical staffs. The office for Wales, under an under-secretary, had a large administrative and professional staff and dealt with most questions arising from the minister's statutory responsibilities as far as these related to Wales, drawing legal and medical assistance from the Welsh Board of Health. In 1965 the office became part of the new Welsh Office under the secretary of state for Wales.

In England the department's nine regional offices were gradually dismantled from 1954, but in 1962 a regional housing office was set up in Manchester. In 1963 another office, with planning as well as housing functions, was set up in Newcastle upon Tyne. A year later the Labour government set up a new Department of Economic Affairs with responsibility for integrating regional economic planning and in 1965 the two regional offices of the ministry were absorbed in a new regional organisation, based on six areas as follows: East Midlands, West Midlands, Northern, North West, South West, and Yorkshire and Humberside.