INTRODUCTION

Chapter Three examines the growing influence of central government, the Scottish Office, on town and country planning in the Scottish Borders in the 1960s through the issue of the White Paper on the Scottish Economy, the decision to proceed with the Tweedbank Development and the revival of the regional approach to planning with the commissioning of the Central Borders Study. It discusses the local planning authorities’ response to the Scottish Office's initiatives and describes how planning and development became closely intertwined in a bid to stem the long-term depopulation of the region.

Following the introduction by the Labour government of the 1947 Planning Act along with a raft of other pioneering legislation such as the New Towns Act 1946 and the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, there followed a period of consolidation in terms of planning legislation with the election of the Conservative government in 1951. During the 1950s, the planning system became centred around development control. Development plans were little more than land use maps and, as the pace of change increased in the early 1960s, they become increasingly out of date and of diminishing value in determining the future direction of growth and development.

The early 1960s was a period of great social, cultural, economic and political change; the ‘Swinging Sixties’. The legacies of the Second World War, unrepaired and unfit housing and temporary prefabs, were replaced by burgeoning local authority housing schemes. New styles of architecture, using concrete and steel, became common. The established industries of shipbuilding, iron and steel, coal mining and the textile industry were in irreversible decline. In Scotland, the SHD, which had responsibility for the promotion of Scottish industry and the DHS, which had the responsibility for planning, were replaced by the Scottish Home and Health Department (SHHD) and the Scottish Development Department (SDD), which henceforth had the combined responsibility for planning and economic development. Most contemporary commentators attribute this decision of the Conservative government to the publication of the inquiry into the Scottish economy by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) in 1961, which urged the creation of a new government department to combine the Scottish Secretary's statutory responsibilities for planning and the promotion of industry.