Catalogue description Ministry of Housing and Local Government and predecessors: Regional Offices: Registered Files

The regional organisation of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning consisted of ten Regions, nine of them to cover all England except the Greater London Region, which was dealt with by a headquarters division and one for the whole of Wales with Monmouthshire.

The main functions of the regional offices were to keep in close touch with the local planning authorities and to help them, by providing information and advice from regional sources and from headquarters, to discharge their responsibilities under the Planning Acts; to keep headquarters informed about the needs and views of local planning authorities and about situations that arose in the Regions which may have called for action; to try to reconcile the plans of all government departments in so far as they affected use of land and in so far as they could be discussed regionally; and to deal with any work delegated or referred from headquarters.

In 1951 the offices were absorbed in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government but from 1954 were progressively dismantled, a process which was largely completed by 1956. During the period of their active existence there were nine regional offices in the provinces and this series contains files covering all aspects of their day to day work.(In the mid-sixties regionalism came back into favour and six regional offices were established as against nine in the war and post-war period covered by the files in this series.) In a few cases, however, files continued in active use after the regional office was closed and contain papers added later by London Headquarters. The nine regions concerned were:-

Eastern

East and West Ridings of Yorkshire

Midlands

Northern

North Midlands

North Western

Southern

South Eastern

South Western