How TO SAVE TIHiM I wonder why nothing more has
been heard of a proposal put forward by the architect, Lord Mottistone, in the House of Lords two years ago about the preservation and repair of old buildings. He suggested that there should be a tax of £1 in every £1,000 spent on new buildings. The tax could be levied through local planning authorities, who have to pass every new building project and know roughly what each is going to cost. To a man building, let us say, a big cube in the City costing half a million the tax would be negligible, as it would to a poorer person building a bungalow for £2,000. Lord Mottistone estimated that an annual revenue of £3 mil- lion could be produced in this way, and administered by the Minister of Works for the preservation of old buildings, country houses and old cottages and villages. By now, at the increased rate, of new building in this country, the amount raised annually could easily pay not only for secular buildings, but also for the repair of old churches.
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