ABSTRACT
Countryside planning might be said to date from 1909, when the Development Commission was set up, with terms of reference to support ‘any scheme which may be calculated to benefit, directly or indirectly, the rural economy of Great Britain’ (Wibberley, 1982). Two million pounds were set aside for its operations from a new tax on the consumption of alcohol, particularly whisky. The then Chancellor, Lloyd George, was influenced by the poverty of the rural economy he had seen during his boyhood in North Wales and later during his political career as he journeyed throughout England and Wales. The Commission proceeded to deal with a variety of socio-economic questions, though its best known agency, the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas was not set up until 1968, and many of its rural concerns either became the province of other agencies (agricultural research was taken over by the Agriculture and Food Research Council for example) or were absorbed by the growing statutory procedures for town and country planning.
