A CIVIC SENSE IN ENGLAND ?

THE KENT COALFIELDS.

IT is generally realized that Kent coal is now proved and that East Kent is destined to become a great colliery area, but few people realize how rapidly the industry has developed or know that East Kent is to-day an area dotted over with chimney stacks, winding machinery, spoil banks, single-line railways, and all the upheaval that accompanies the extraction of coal.

One would have thought that even in the first decade of the present century, if not during the War, so important a development as the opening up of a vast new coal- field in the South would have been a matter of grave concern to those responsible for the government of this country. One would have thought that the Board of Trade, or, perhaps, the old Local Government Board, would have seen to it that encouragement was given to the enterprise, and that they would have satisfied themselves that the interests of all concerned were duly considered. The -Government has been known to give financial support to such undertakings as wireless, shipping and air travel—why not to the extraction of coal ?

It is not to be wondered at that during the War the attention of the Government was only directed to Kent as being the county which was nearest to France, and as such it received much thought owing to the possibility of its foreshores and marshes being used for new ports. Richborough resulted, but generally it was found to be a place difficult of access from the sea.

Since the War, perhaps no area in this country has been regarded with greater concern by the Ministry of Health as being in need of regional planning. It is, perhaps, well known that at the present moment there have been set up throughout the country some twenty to thirty different groups of Local Authorities engaged in regional planning, and we understand that after considerable difficulty a group has been got together for the express purpose of preparing a regional plan of East Kent.

It is with the outcome of this belated undertaking that we are chiefly concerned. Everyone, even the coalowners themselves, now admits the importance of exercising foresight in building well-designed villages for the miners, and of definitely considering the construc- tion and improvement of lines of communication and ports, but no one quite sees how it is to be done. We have said that a Regional Planning Committee has been set up by the Ministry of Health, and the services of Professor Abercrombie of Liverpool have been secured with a view to preparing a survey of existing conditions. We are not sure if Professor Abercrombie will be retained to prepare a scheme of development. In any case we hope that if the Regional Committee does proceed from survey to . proposals, it will, in so far as it is able, deal with the problem in a way that is deserving of its magnitude.

Members of Local Authorities who compose the Regional Planning Committee are not miners, but repre- sentatives of urban and rural district councils, who no doubt look upon the exploitation of their area with mingled feelings of trepidation and expectancy. In addition to the members of Local Authorities, there have been co-opted on to the Regional Committee a few of the more powerful representatives of the mining group. Regional planning has no statutory backing and, apart from such powers as are contained in the Town Planning Act and subsidiary Acts, it depends for its execution upon agreement amongst those concerned.

To convert Kent into a model industrial area will mean a new departure from the methods of last century. The mincowner is a man who seeks to develop a great industry, and who operates when and where he can most easily and quickly produce an immediate return. It is no business of his to lay out vast sums of money in pre- paratory work ensuring thereby the best results for fulore generations. He cannot, for instance, begin by erecting huge power stations for the electrification of all his plant ; build expensive harbours in lieu of cheap, but permanently inconvenient, connexions with harbours that are a great distance away ; remove his spoil to well considered and suitable sites ; sink his " shafts where they are least detrimental to agrieUltural and residential interests, and, in short, adopt all those long-sighted measures which a well-considered regional plan might secure were it but supported by national finance. And, indeed, why should he do these things, even if he were 'able ? These things are of national concern, and whilst to adopt such measures need not necessarily mean nationalizing or subsidizing the mines, it does mean some sort of national insurance, and this in return for guidance and control.

The more we examine this question of regional plan- ning, and in particular the planning of a huge industrial area like a coalfield, the more clearly we realize what a complexity of interests is tied up in land. It is strange to - think that the nation as a whole is quite incapable of exercising any real control over the exploitation and possible destruction of a county by a few individuals who have the means at their disposal for raising coal.

Mines are usually sunk, not in positions that are economically the best, where they will do the least des- truction to agriculture and residential and surface interests, but where perhaps an impoverished owner can most cheaply be persuaded to part with his mining rights. Protective legislation is badly needed, but what is immediately more pressing than protective legislation, which is apt to interfere with the most contentious of questions—those related to industrial speculation and the use of land—is a thoroughly Well-conducted geological survey of the British coalfields, to be followed with legis- lation which will determine definitely the positions where shafts may be sunk, spoil dumped, railway lines laid, and roads and harbours constructed. It should then be up to a colliery company to work a mine only in accordance with the requirements of such a plan.

Nothing could be more disconcerting than an account of the Kent development from its early initiation up to four years ago, which has been compiled in a small book by Mrs. A. E. Richie, and which we understand is an abstraction from numerous reports that have appeared in the Coal Trades Review.

We are told how company after company, with more faith than foresight and less finance, put down boring after boring, and failed to achieve success at the last strata in the venture.

In the year 1890 the Braby boring, sunk in the first instance to investigate the possibilities of a Channel Tunnel, after going down 2,221 feet passed seams of good coal, and also a 12-fbot seam of iron ore.

The first company to be formed was the Kent Coalfields Syndicate, Limited, which, after numerous failures and resuscitations under new names, became ultimately, in 1912, the Channel Steel Company, with Sir Hugh Bell as chairman. Other companies, profiting by the experi- ence of the Dover group, bored and sunk shafts further north. Conspicuous among them were the Kent Coal Company, registered in 1904, and Sondage Syndicate, Limited, in 1908.

• The first really important seams were reached in 1906 by the company working at Waldersham and Fiedville. Various concession groins then sunk shafts, and the true direction of the seams became gradually known, and their richness proved. It would appear that the seams lie east of the Dover and Canterbury road, and are dcepest and richest- as they run north.

The money that has already been squandered in Kent owing to the -exercise of insufficient skill, to inadequate finance and generally the unscientific and haphazard method of exploitation is enormous.

Not only has there been no definite and comprehensive scheme, but if there should be one, no single individual or group of individuals, be they mineowners or Regional Committee, would be sufficiently powerful to put it into execution without statutory powers, State guidance and perhaps national financial support. S. D. ADSH.EAD