ABSTRACT
By 1968, concern over the social and environmental impacts of the growth of car traffic and the decline of public transport led to a refinement and reassertion of the policies of the 1940s which, in the following decade, cascaded through the railway and planning sectors and produced a new set of spatial outcomes. At the national level there were some important features to the pattern of institutional structures put in place to deliver this. With regard to the railways, at the broadest level there was continuity, in that the BRB remained in existence throughout the period and the railway was led by the Chairman of the Board. However this didn’t preclude significant change within the organisation itself which impacted on external relationships. With regard to planning at the national level, there was a high degree of continuity too. The environmental debate led, in 1970, to creation of the Department of the Environment (DOE) and this continued to have planning as part of its remit throughout the period. However there was change in that the Department of Transport (DoT) was subsumed within the DOE as a result of the surge of commitment to integrating land-use and transport planning, but this was a temporary marriage lasting only from 1970-76. At the local authority level there was far reaching change, both at the start of the period and in the mid-1980s.
