22

THE NEW TOWNS

halls, staff rooms and even cloakrooms for teaching purposes. Such crowding,
 moreover, has been accentuated by the ‘ freeze’ in new school construction
 imposed when the Tory Government took office in 1951, and by other
=ducational economies. At one time in 1953, the school-building programme
in Hemel Hempstead was almost eighteen months in arrears.
Yet, despite the obligation that the County Councils have rightly felt
towards their © old’ ratepayers and their children, they have done their best
to keep pace with the demands of the newcomers. Hertfordshire, for example,
has built over one hundred new schools since the end of the war, and nearly
one-third of the children in the county are now housed in post-war schools—
a remarkable achievement in the circumstances. Other education authorities
have not done quite so well. Crawley was handicapped for some time by
the fact that West Sussex had always preferred to build schools out of
revenue and not by capital borrowing, and by the fact that the programme
for Crawley alone was equal to the whole programme for the rest of the
county. Not unnaturally, there has been some pressure on the County
Councils to eliminate schools condemned years ago, especially in their
rural areas, rather than meet New Town claims that the ‘old’ population
thought excessive and selfish.
At the end of 1954, though local difficulties remained, the situation had
improved a good deal, and it seems likely that the County Councils will now
be able to keep abreast of the essential requirements of New Towns. There
remains a need, however, for more facilities for technical and further education.
 These are fundamentally industrial towns, and they are going to need
trained workers with skills and imagination. It seems desirable that technical
colleges, preferably of the polytechnic type, should be built before long to
meet the needs of the young people. The 1956 programme for Crawley I
notice. includes a technical college, serving much of North Sussex.

Dther Services
The strict control imposed on Corporation finances, and in particular
the requirement that ‘ community &gt; projects shall be self-financing—has
meant that some amenities and facilities they wish to provide in the New
Towns cannot be provided by them and must therefore be undertaken by
the local authorities or not at all. In some cases, responsibility has been
shared: a Development Corporation has provided and laid out a playing
field, while the local Council maintains it. In others, the Corporation has
offered to take a share—in a new hall or special construction in the town
centre—and has found the local Council unwilling for reasons of expense
to join in the project.
This is one reason why there should be special transitional grants to
New Towns, of which a part should be given to the local authorities concerned.
 The other reason for this proposal is that, by accepting New Towns
within their boundaries, these authorities—from parish to county—have
shouldered special burdens in the interest both of the country as a whole
and of the exporting local authorities whose housing problem they have
helped to ease at very small expense to the exporting authorities.