The Town Planning Bill The Town and Country Planning Bill
is not having so smooth a passage through the Standing Committee of the House of Commons as some of its supporters expected. Last week the Committee reintroduced sonic of the old precautions against undue haste in determining a plan. On Tuesday, an amendment carried against the Govern- ment provided that a landowner whose right to develop his property was restricted by a plan should receive statutory compensation, not payment at the will of the local authority. We can sympathize with the supporters of the Bill in their impatience to secure a reform that is so obviously required and that will do so much to prevent rural England from being spoilt by ill-considered develop- ment for housing and industrial purposes. Yet the land- owners cannot and ought not to be ignored. They are heavily taxed on the value of their property, and the State in common fairness should compensate them if, in the planning of an area, it deprives them of part of that value. The full benefits of planning can only be attained by co-operation between all the interests concerned.
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