In between Margaret Thatcher’s abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986 and the creation by the first Tony Blair government of the Greater London Authority (GLA) in 1999, with its directly-elected Mayor, a range of organisations were set up to try to fill the gap.
Perhaps the most important was the London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC), a statutory, cross-party body formed in the year of the GLC’s dissolution as ministers acknowledged that without some pan-London collaboration, the capital, already in the grip of its long, post-war decline, would struggle even more.
There was a danger that the work of LPAC would be overlooked, almost forgotten by history, despite its playing a vital strategic part in keeping Greater London’s development coherent and, indeed, innovative and alive to new possibilities once its recovery began in the 1990s.
That danger has been averted thanks to the commitment and great work of Richard Derecki, a contributor to On London and a hugely experienced economist and governance expert who has worked for the 10 Downing Street strategy unit and the GLA.
Richard, along with a group of former LPAC stalwarts, has organised a huge volume of material held in The London Archives to create an online story of LPAC, hosted by The London Society.
The new LPAC site also contains a wealth of documents and papers that belonged to the late and greatly missed Nicky Gavron, who after an extraordinary career in London government, died in August 2024.
Nicky became a member of LPAC in 1988, its lead Labour member in 1989 and its chair in 1994. She devoted a great deal of time in her latter years to piecing together and highlighting LPAC’s work.
Richard and his team have done a fantastic job. Enjoy Re-inventing The City: The Story of LPAC here.
Follow Richard Derecki on Instagram. Image from late 1980s aerial footage.
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