The Conservatives after 1979 - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 102

included in the 1980 Local Government, Planning and Land Act powers to create
Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) and Enterprise Zones.
The UDCs had powers of land acquisition and development similar to the New
Town Corporations set up by the post-war Labour Government. However the key
differences were that UDC areas were designated within existing cities, were run by
members appointed by the Secretary of State (excluding local authorities entirely), and
had as their main objective the use of public funds to lever investment from the private
sector. They were established initially in Merseyside and London Docklands, with
further designations after 1987 in most of the country's other main cities. Enterprise
Zones were smaller areas where simplified planning arrangements applied and where
investors enjoyed tax exemptions for an initial ten years.
From a transport viewpoint the most significant consequence of these 'planning-
free' areas was their exploitation by developers in promoting new kinds of large-
scale 'out-of-town' shopping or leisure centres, often in direct competition with
neighbouring city centres. These included the Metro Centre near Gateshead,
Meadowhall near Sheffield and Merry Hill at Dudley within the West Midlands
conurbation. Like the regional shopping centres referred to previously all of
these drew car-borne visitors from wide catchment areas and in doing so relied
fundamentally on motorways and trunk roads which had been planned (and publicly
funded) with no such use in mind.
The ultimate symbol of the role of the private sector in urban regeneration (or
alternatively of the private exploitation of public subsidies) was the proposal to
develop a new office centre at Canary Wharf within the area of the London Docklands
UDC. The project was literally on a monumental scale, designed to compete with the
City of London at a time when financial services were expanding rapidly to capitalise
on deregulation. Unfortunately the 'big bang' of 1987 turned to big bust shortly
afterwards, the property market collapsed and the owners of Canary Wharf, Olympia
and York, went into liquidation.
Regeneration of London's Docklands had always been hampered by poor
accessibility and the Docklands Light Railway was inadequate in scale and scope if
Canary Wharf was to succeed. In response the Government approved an extension
of the underground Jubilee Line in 1993 which connected Canary Wharf with the
main line terminals of London Bridge and Waterloo and with Central London. The
authorisation was conditional on an initial £98m of an intended £400m contribution
from the private sector as part of the refinancing of the Canary Wharf development.
The decision was criticised on the basis that priority in public funding was being
given to this expensive rail project over several others in the capital in order to bale
out a flagship example of private enterprise. Resentment was compounded when
construction of the line resulted in the escalation of costs from a planned £1.9bn to
an eventual £3.6bn .
6.9 'Roads for Prosperity'
For much of the 1980s the development of the national road system proceeded
comparatively uneventfully, in part because of the reduced length of completely
new roads and because of improvements in road planning procedures. The most
notable element in the programme was the construction of the orbital M25 around
London, completed in 1986. Given political commitment to building the road, actual
construction was greatly facilitated by a wide band of countryside encircling the capital