A Housing (and Civic) History of Huddersfield: Part III, 1951 to the Present: ‘foundered on the rocks of finance’

We left Huddersfield in last week’s post in 1951 planning for the future. Nationally, the Conservatives had succeeded to power though the party was then endorsing a broad post-war political consensus, social democratic in some respects and still committed to a significant programme of council housebuilding. In Huddersfield, the Liberals were for the moment the majority party though on the cusp of a slow decline. Huddersfield’s 1951 Development Plan portended a brighter future for the borough however. Some of its proposals and their later evolution – a proposed inner ring road and other town centre ‘modernisations’ – would be criticised; its desire to provide decent homes to the over 4900 households on the housing waiting list seemed uncontroversial. Early postwar housing in Almondbury illustrated in Huddersfield Corporation’s 1951 Official Handbook. My thanks to Mike Ashworth for sharing this source. Housing plans included an extension of the early postwar Fernside Estate and the…