Electricity Supply Reform
The supply of electricity in the London and Home Counties District comes from no fewer than 75 separate undertakings. This division of service is extremely uneconomical in itself, and leads to glaring discrepancies in the prices charged in different boroughs. There is so little to be said for the existing arrangement that almost any scheme of unification would be an improvement. In a repo issued by the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority it is proposed that all undertakings in its district should be trans- ferred to public ownership, and that a reconstituted Electricity Board should take over the duty of providing the whole area with what might well become the largest and finest electricity supply-service in the world. The scheme may be compared, both in the financial arrangements proposed and in the unified services to be provided, with that applied when London transport was unified under the London Passenger Transport Board. The Electricity Act of 1926 only went half-way along the road of reform owing to the resistance of vested interests, and it is unthinkable that the period of post-war re- construction should leave things where they are; and indeed the Scott Report recommended that the Electricity Commissioners should be instructed to prepare schemes. Needless to say, what is needed is an improved electricity plan for all Britain, and not for the London area only—and that is recognised in the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority's report. The objections which have been made on this score are no more reasonable than to protest because Coventry or Southampton has put forward schemes of rebuilding.
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