Mr. Dalton's Bonfire
The Working Party on Building which published its report last week was obviously on safe ground when it recommended a reduction of the vexatious controls which, far from facilitating planning, actually hamper it. Many of these devices were so nonsensical that to be grateful for their removal is rather like being grateful to an assiduous wasp which, for reasons best known to itself, decides to suspend its activities. Yet it may be that Mr. Dalton, the Minister of Town and Country Planning, deserves some ,personal credit for allowing householders to build garages and paint their houses, farmers to put up new buildings and factory owners to extend their premises without reference to some " control " whose ministrations were either irritating or superfluous. And if he does deserve it he should have it, for there is some evidence that he can make a useful contribution to town and country planning. It may even turn out that the controls which remain, and which still make it necessary to obtain building licences and submit plans for major alterations and extensions, are essential for the preservation of amenity. That will be discovered in time. In fact, there remains only the usual qualification, which must be made because the apparatus of useless controls in other fields still remains formidable, that the pointless waste entailet_ by this fussing is so scandalous that it should have been cut out tong ago.
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