THE NEW TOWNS

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of English local government, and it may well require a new type of authority
to handle such obligations. At this stage I am not prepared to make any
very definite proposals about the timing, method or character of the ultimate
iransfer. This is a matter which requires a special and careful study, and
that would in any case depend partly on whether any structural changes in
local government have been introduced nationally before the transfer
becomes due.
I would, however, make two general observations. The first is that
it accords with the general policy of the Labour Party that ultimate ownership
 of a New Town should pass into the hands of an elected municipal
authority. The New Towns, perhaps before other urban areas, should
become models for the social ownership of residential property. Secondly,
it now seems probable that the New Towns will surmount the financial
difficulties which threatened for three or four years to cripple them. They
will reach maturity as going concerns, and any authority taking one of them
over will take over an asset and not a liability, Moreover, apart from their
solvency on revenue account, they will represent a capital asset of enormous
value. There should be no doubt that a local authority owning a New Town
will be in a strong and healthy financial position.

The Terms of Transfer
How strong, how healthy, will depend in part on the terms of transfer.
From the standpoint of the local authority, it would clearly be desirable to
lake them over on the basis of outstanding debt—for this would merely
mean maintaining for perhaps twenty or thirty years the annual payments
previously made by the Corporations, payments that would be covered by
‘he current revenue account. The Exchequer, however, is more likely to
propose transfer ‘at valuation’; this would enable the Treasury to cream
off much of the development value, and it would impose a far heavier annual
burden on the authority which assumed ownership.
This problem must be argued in more detail, in terms of comparative
payments. But there is this consideration. On the basis of repayment of
outstanding debt, the Treasury would have received back, at the end of sixty
years, each of its capital advances as well as the appropriate interest for the
term of the advance. It will have done little else but advance the capital;
the town will have been created by those who built it, work in it and live
in it. Its future value is the value they, as a community, have given it. If
the capital had been borrowed privately and repaid with interest, at the
znd of the loan the freehold would pass to the Corporation, just as a private
house-owner acquires his title from a building society. Why should the
State seek to make an additional profit? As the years go on, this question
will certainly be thrashed out in greater detail.
The point to note now is that social planning can be, and is, a financial

SUCCcessS.