National policy and national parks

The view that the countryside was worth preserving had been gaining ground before the war, but had made little headway during the economic depression of the 1930s. But already in the darkest days of the Second World War there were those who were looking ahead to a better future. ‘While almost everyone was busy with the immediate task of winning the war, it was also a time to dream of “a forward looking and bigger thing” than simply reverting to the pre-war days.’

In 1941 the Scott Committee was formed to look ahead to what the British countryside should be like when peace returned. The committee, headed by Leslie Scott, a Lord Justice of Appeal, founder member of the CPRE and an active member of the Town and Country Planning Association, was set up to ‘consider the conditions which should govern building and other constructional development in country areas consistent with the maintenance of agriculture … having regard to … the well-being of rural communities and the preservation of rural amenities’. The vice-chairman was Dudley Stamp, well respected for his work on the Land-use Survey and a member of the small group which established the agenda for the development of post-war rural planning policy. His work had shown that between 1927 and 1939 there had been an average annual loss of 25,000 hectares of open land to urban and industrial development. Scott, with his conservationist background, emphasised the aesthetic values of the countryside: ‘The landscape of England and Wales is a striking example of the interdependence between the satisfaction of man's material wants and the creation of beauty’, and so ‘farmers and foresters are unconsciously the nation's landscape gardeners’. He brought together the aspirations of the economist and the conservationist in the statement: