The Layfield Report on the Greater London Development Plan.

This article focuses on the Layfield report on Greater London Development Plan, plan that requires local authorities to state their objectives, present alternative strategies for their future development and evaluate the alternative strategies for their future development. Begun when the Greater London Council (GLC) was formed, its origins ante-dated the 1968 Town and Country Planning Act. GLDP is an attempt to define planning objectives and to evaluate a plan for London, England it was backed by many research papers and studies and it was subjected to detailed examination by inquiry. Named the Layfield Inquiry after its chairman, the GLDP was the largest planning inquiry held in the country. The Inquiry accused the GLC of over-ambition for trying to argue as if it could alter population and employment trends when it had neither the statutory powers, nor the real power to do so; variable quality in the treatment of issues--so that, for example, it took much more seriously highway planning where it had responsibility than public transport where it had not (until it took over London Transport in 1970); no logical connection between facts and policies, or between objectives and policies; and describing objectives so vaguely that they were not operational.