WILL THE RIBBON ACT WORK ?
PARLIAMENT has now passed the Restriction of Ribbon Development Bill,,and passed it in a form not substantially weaker than that in which it was introduced. The alarming amendment, which the Standing Committee introduced into Clause 7, was got rid of on the Report stage last Monday. Its authors had meant well, for in making petty and qUarter sessions the arbiters between highway authorities and frontagers their idea was to prevent bureaucracy from usurping judicial functions. They forgot, however; that the functions in question were not mainly judicial but administrative, and that the benches of magistrates-7-whose way it is to deeide without giving reasons for their decisions— were in any case almost the worst possible bodies for building up the needed framework of consistent and coherent policy. However their challenge led Mr. Hore-Belisha to improve on his original clause, and the text finally adopted was a wholly satisfactory one.
Immediately it has become law, the measure comes into force ; and we shall not therefore have long to wait before we see what the local authorities and the Ministry of Transport are together going to make of .it. The evil which it is intended to control is one about which most intelligent people are agreed. How far will it really control it ? The answer rests in the first place with the local authorities. Sur- prising as it may seem, it does not really enable them to do much, if anything, that they could not already do under the Town and Country Planning Act. What is more, under that Act it could_ be done for the most part without the liability, to compensate property-owners, which the new measure entails. Yet it was not done, and that is why Mr. Hore- Belisha's legislation is there. What, then, are its advantages ? , Chiefly, one is inclined to answer, publicity, The control over ribbon development which the Town and Country Planning Act gave was mixed with, and hidden under, control of a great deal else. The whole approach to town planning and country plan- ning in England is invested in an atmosphere of leisure. Twenty-six years haye gone by since Mr. John Burns .passed his useless Act of 1909, and even now our authorities, central and, local, have scarcely outgrown the habit of regarding planning as a quasi- academic exercise—something which produces inter7 esting advisory material, which it would Jae pedantry,
however, to act on when the time comes. Baneful as this lethargy is throughout, it has proved qUite specially so in relation to an evil like ribbon develoP-.
ment, which has not Stood still to be looked at, but stalked across the country with giant strides, piling up with increasing rapidity mischiefs that it will be almost impossible to repair. The great merit, then, of the new Act may be, that it drags the ribbon.
development issue into the open ; exhibits it as
something with which the local authorities can cope if they will ;. and gives a chance to public opinion 'to
bring them to book for apathy. Because the Ministry of Health had not done that and showed no signs of doing it, the Ministry of Transport can be credited with a genuine advance. , Yet we are far from confident that it will suffice. Generally speaking in England, if you want to know whether an Act will work or be a dead-letter, you look to see what money there will he for working it, and where it is coming from. Asking that question here, you will get. a not-too-promising answer. None of the expenses incurred by a local authority under the Act will be regarded as " expenses of an improve- ment of a road," except those incurred under section 1, and towards the latter alone will contributions from the Road Fund be available. That means that the Road Fund may help the local authority on what may be called the traffic side of the Act, but not on,,the amenity side. The much-debated Section 18, Hfor instance, which empowers a highway authority 'tO acquire by agreement or compulsorily any, land Within 220 yards from the 'middle of a road Which they think necessary for • preventing the erection of buildings detrimental to the view from the road, 'must., if utilized at all; be utiliied at the sole cost of the local.
ratepayers ; and it will be interesting to see how many local .councils take action under it on those terms. It has to be remembered that the counties in which vandalism 'is most to be apprehended—or .
at least in which it has most to destroy--are precisely those poor agricultural areas which are least able
alone to bear the cost of preventing it. And why should they, seeing. that the class. primarily benefited -the road users—tend less and leSs to be ratepayers in the districts through which they drive ?
. The Act will dO something, if it is widely used, to prevent the chance owners. of frontages from holding the community .to. ransom for unearned inerement7.
values derived from the community's own expenditure on road making and road widening. Section 9, which deals with compensation, is much less drastic ori this point than it well might have been, but it goes some way towards eliminating the evil in future. It still does not touch, however, what has been the main motive for ribbon development, viz., the fact that if you build a house on a new " private " road, there will be heavy road-charges on it when the public authority takes the road over, whereas if you build it along an existing public road, there are no road charges at all. It is this, essentially, which has caused new houses to be strung out along existing roads instead of being planned in compact groupings with new roads of their own. And until some system is adopted of putting a more or less equal road-charge on all new houses, according to frontage, it is difficult to see how the present potent premium on ribbon planning can be expected to cease yielding its natural result.
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