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BRITAIN: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
Northern Ireland; sugar confectionery in Yorkshire, Bristol and Birmingham; shipbuilding and repairing at the main ports and up many of the estuaries. There is also a wide range of industry scattered throughout the country, mainly concerned with consumer goods and building and civil engineering.
Distribution of Industry Policy
Areas in Great Britain where there is likely to be a special danger of unemployment may be scheduled by the Board of Trade as 'Development Areas' under the Distribution of Industry Act, 1945. The purpose of this Act, and of the Distribution of Industry Act, 1950, is to promote the growth of new industry and the expansion of existing industry in the Development Areas. The main advantages which these Acts give to Development Areas are that the Board of Trade may build factories for letting to suitable industry and the Treasury may help by making loans or grants to undertakings which are unable to secure finance through normal channels. There are Development Areas in the following parts of England and Wales: the mining and coastal areas of Northumberland and Durham; West Cumberland; South Wales and Monmouthshire; Wrexham; South Lancashire; Merseyside; and North-East Lancashire, which became a Development Area on 3rd March 1953. In Scotland the industrial area in and around the Clyde Valley, the Dundee area, and part of the Highlands have been scheduled as the Scottish Development Area.
The Government cannot direct a firm to go to any particular area or site. But, in addition to the special powers in scheduled Development Areas, the Board of Trade has statutory powers under the Town and Country Planning Acts, 1947, to ensure that new industrial development throughout Great Britain is carried out consistently with the proper distribution of industry. A certificate to this effect is necessary before planning consent may be given by a local planning authority (see p. 255) for a new industrial building or extension with an area of over 5,000 sq. ft. (464 square metres).
Of the 6,100 new factories and extensions to old ones, representing 130 million square feet (approximately 12 million square metres) of factory space, built between 1st January 1945 and the end of 1952, 1,660 (40 per cent by factory space and value) were built in the Development Areas.
The Industries Development Act (Northern Ireland), 1945, gives the Ministry of Commerce of Northern Ireland similar powers in the whole of Northern Ireland.
Government assistance is not limited to Development Areas: it is given to other areas of high unemployment not listed as Development Areas. The Buckie-Peterhead area in north-east Scotland, which is heavily dependent on the fishing industry and has a hard core of unemployment, is not a Development Area but is to receive help through the Development Commission (see p. 265). The Commission has agreed to consider sympathetically requests for help in building small factories for industrialists who are prepared to go there.
Organization
The pattern of organization and ownership in the manufacturing, mining and building and civil engineering sectors of British industry is varied; but, as in the rest of the economy, the part played by public undertakings has increased since the war, particularly in mining since coal was nationalized in 1946. In manufacturing and building, private enterprise still accounts for the major part of activity, employing, in 1950, 96 per cent of the persons engaged in these industries. Also in terms of employment, only about 30 per cent of the public utilities - gas, electricity, water and transport - was the concern of private enterprise. The percentage for agriculture and mining grouped together was 62. The number of persons employed in the public sector of the economy as a whole increased by so per cent between 1945 and 1950, so that by the middle of 1950, 22½ per cent of the total number of persons in civil employment were in the public sector and 77½ per cent in the private sector. In mid-1953 the position was still approximately the same.
