ABSTRACT
The Conservative Party, which tended to identify planning with controls and restriction, were in general opposed to it; and it was only in the early 1960s that they began to move in favour of both national and regional economic planning. No doubt, because the problems were increasingly recognized, the Labour Government, on coming to office, set up an entirely new machinery for regional planning. The present regional division of the country, by which England is divided into eight planning regions and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland comprise one each, dates only from 1964. The nature of regional planning and the type of plan produced obviously depends on the sort of regional body which is charged with producing it. Any type of regional planning, of course, requires a complicated organizational framework. Co-ordination between central and regional authorities is therefore vital to any fulfilment of regional planning objectives.
