ABSTRACT
When the National Health Service (NHS) was established, it inherited a collection of hospital assets which no national health authority would have invested in, had one existed before the war. Surveys both before and after the Second World War identified large variations between different parts of the country in the quality and the quantity of provision. A third of consultant staff were located in London and some parts of the country, such as what is now the Anglia and Oxford Region, had virtually none. In other areas, facilities were duplicated as a result of parallel developments by local authorities and voluntary bodies.
