Crawley Development Corporation was set up in February 1947 by the Government of the United Kingdom to establish, administer and control the development of the New Town of Crawley in accordance with the New Towns Act 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68). The Corporation had the task of growing the ancient Sussex market town of Crawley from a population of 9,000 to 40,000 by the early 1960s, expanding its commercial and industrial base and developing a balanced, socially cohesive community. A master plan supplied by planning consultant Anthony Minoprio would guide the Corporation's work. The "energy and enthusiasm" of its chairman Thomas Bennett helped it meet many of its targets early, and it was formally dissolved in 1962. Its assets passed to the Commission for New Towns in that year; they are now owned privately or by the local authority, Crawley Borough Council.
The Corporation was based at Broadfield House, a 19th-century villa in the south of the town. Professionals and specialists from many fields were employed: architects, engineers, designers, legal and financial experts were all involved during its 15-year existence. A committee headed by Bennett took overall charge. Wide-ranging powers were granted—from physically preparing the land to examining financial contracts—and in return the Corporation was expected to transform the "designated area" into a viable regional centre and community.
Problems faced by the Development Corporation included labour and materials shortages, a lengthy legal battle against the designation order, the resignation of the original master plan designer, complaints from residents about its far-reaching powers (including some high-profile challenges), and the position of the designated area across the boundaries of several local authorities, making negotiations more complex. Nevertheless, the Corporation was able to drive the New Town's rapid postwar growth and transformation; population targets were regularly revised upwards because of Crawley's success in attracting people and jobs, and the town now houses 100,000 people.
History
Background
By the early 1930s, the market town of Crawley and the adjacent villages of Ifield and Three Bridges were beginning to merge, and low-quality ribbon development stretched into the surrounding countryside towards Tinsley Green and the new Gatwick Aerodrome, northwards along the London Road and west of Ifield towards Horsham. This was of great concern to West Sussex and East Sussex county councils, and the national government was also aware of the problem. After the Town and Country Planning Act 1932 extended the scope of urban planning in the United Kingdom, a group of people representing various local and wider interests began to meet regularly in Crawley with the aim of improving the area's future development. As their influence grew, they successfully argued for Crawley to be governed by a single local authority: until that time, 1945, the area was controlled by three county councils and three parish councils. Meanwhile, the national government was making several proposals which together paved the way for the concept of New Towns. The Barlow Commission (1940) argued for the mass movement of people and jobs from cities to new satellite towns; the Scott Committee (1941) specified more details about how such towns should develop; and the Uthwatt Committee (1942) discussed how land and buildings could be compulsorily purchased.
Patrick Abercrombie's Greater London Plan of 1944 proposed taking 1 million residents out of London. One third were to be rehoused in ten new towns in a ring about from the city. In 1945, Lord Reith and his committee described how these towns would be developed: they were intended to be "self-contained and balanced communities for work and living". Following the passing of the New Towns Act 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68) in April of that year, sites had to be found: two locations south of London (Crowhurst and Holmwood, both in Surrey) were rejected, and the Minister of Town and Country Planning Lewis Silkin selected Crawley as the site for a "twin-centred town [... with] an eventual population of 30,000 to 40,000".
On 10 July 1946, Silkin met officers from the various local authorities that governed the Crawley area. He explained his choice of Crawley as a New Town; no objections were raised in the meeting, but the mood from some groups and members of the public was less enthusiastic and a public inquiry had to be held. The proceedings, on 4–6 November 1946 at Montefiore Hall in Three Bridges, held up the official New Town designation until 9 January 1947, and two further legal challenges meant no work could take place until December 1947.
Creation of the Corporation In October 1946, Lewis Silkin set up an informal committee to run the affairs of the proposed Crawley New Town. In February 1947, shortly after the official designation of New Town status, the group was formalised and renamed Crawley Development Corporation. It had to "design, build and administer a self-contained industrial town of 50,000 within 15 years, and weld this on to the existing scattered haphazard development" around Ifield, Crawley and Three Bridges. It was permitted to compulsorily purchase any land or property within the "designated area", employ any staff it needed to carry out professional, administrative and clerical duties, and subcontract building and other manual work if it preferred not to employ such workers directly. The national government would finance it as required through 60-year loans. In return, the Corporation would have to build residential, industrial, commercial, civic and service buildings and all the infrastructure needed for the new town: electricity (including street lighting), gas, water, drainage and sewerage, and new road connections. It would be responsible for all the houses it built, in terms of both maintenance and finance: it could provide subsidies and charge rents as it saw fit. Governance was outside the Corporation's remit: Crawley Urban District Council, created in 1956 to cover the whole of the designated area, was responsible for matters of local governance. Before the creation of this single local authority, parts of the New Town area were controlled by Horsham Rural District Council (in West Sussex), Cuckfield Rural District Council (East Sussex) and Dorking and Horley Rural District Council (Surrey).
When the Corporation was created in February 1947, its chairman was Sir Wilfred Lindsell. He asked town planner Thomas Wilfred Sharp to prepare a draft master plan, which he delivered on 1 March 1947. Within months, both men had left the Corporation: Lindsell was considered "not dynamic enough" by Lewis Silkin, and Sharp resigned shortly after submitting his plan and some additional research. Local historian Peter Gwynne described this as "an extraordinary decision [...] which was never properly explained". Anthony Minoprio was appointed as consultant planner instead; by June 1947 he had prepared a new draft plan (approved and published in December 1947) and Silkin had taken on a new chairman, Thomas Bennett. Also in 1947, the Corporation acquired Broadfield House. Originally a 19th-century villa in extensive grounds, the building was used as a country club until its closure in that year. The Corporation had already decided to operate temporarily from London while searching for suitable premises in Crawley, rather than building new offices. When the building came on the market in late 1947, the Corporation bought it, refitted it and on 23 August 1948 opened it as its headquarters. Ancillary buildings were put up in the grounds in mid-1949.
Crawley New Town develops
Under Bennett's chairmanship, the Development Corporation consisted of about 90 employees led by a committee of unelected members: Bennett himself, Sir Edward Gillett, Caroline Haslett, Ernest Stanford, Lawrence Neal, E.W. Passold, D. Bolton, Mr Lewis and Alderman James Marshall. Each had a specialism: Bennett was an architect, Gillett a surveyor, and Lewis (a former Barclays Bank chairman) looked after the financial side; Marshall had been Mayor of Croydon, Bolton once led London County Council, and Stanford chaired Crawley Parish Council. Dame Caroline Haslett, educated locally, was a pioneering electrical engineer and writer, and was the British Electricity Authority's first female member. The technicians, surveyors, architects and other professionals employed by the Corporation were organised by Colonel C.A.C. Turner, its chief executive until 1959. Delays caused by materials shortages in the straitened postwar economy meant that the first two years of its existence were given over to planning, but work began in earnest in 1949. Minoprio updated his draft plan, and the Corporation signed off A Master Plan for Crawley New Town in early 1949. The new town's chief architect until May 1952, when he left to become City Architect of Birmingham, was Alwyn Sheppard Fidler.
Throughout 1948, planning took place for the industrial estate, the town centre and the first residential neighbourhood, West Green. Minoprio took charge of the detailed planning of the new town centre, to be based on the existing High Street, while responsibility for the other areas was devolved to Development Corporation staff. In the same year, work started on the sewerage system and New Town's industrial estate (later named Manor Royal), and the first residential street was built. The Corporation looked at bids from 11 companies for the contract to lay out and build Smalls Mead, a street of terraced houses near Crawley Hospital. Early problems included design mistakes in some of the houses, lack of accommodation for builders and inadequate supplies of materials (rationing was still in place, and New Towns received no preferential treatment), but the 34 houses, built by the Hoad and Taylor company for £45,220, were ready by the end of the year.
The Corporation "intended to preserve the character of the High Street as far as possible" when building the new town centre. A site was designated, consisting of open fields off the Three Bridges Road and the ancient High Street at the west end. Nevertheless, it caused controversy and faced challenges to its plans. It used its compulsory purchase powers to buy 76 shops and other buildings on and near the High Street in 1950 and immediately leased them back to their previous owners for 21 years. This bred insecurity, as business owners could be forced to leave at short notice; some compulsorily purchased shops were, however, never demolished. An impassioned statement to the Corporation by Daisy Warren, a hardware shop owner, was widely publicised at the time. Meanwhile, the compensation policy for farmland bought by the Corporation and reclassified as building land was causing frustration among landowners. The government-sanctioned policy allowed the Corporation to profit from its acquisitions. When land was bought east of the High Street in preparation for the new town centre, farmer James Lee took direct action: he built his activist profile by occupying and being evicted from several farms in quick succession, then he became nationally famous for driving his tractor from Crawley to Buckingham Palace as a protest at being "cheated" by the Corporation.
Provision of housing by the Corporation