The New Enterprise

It was with a sense of profound relief that the Gas Light & Coke Company, both court and employees, learned of the Government’s nationalisation plans, which unfolded during 1948 and in the early part of 1949. The Gas Bill, introduced in the House of Commons in January 1948, outlined the areas each of the 12 proposed new Boards would serve and indicated the powers the Boards would have. From this Bill it was at least clear that the North Thames Gas Board would consist very largely of the Gas Light & Coke Company, with the addition of territory in Essex supplied by the Romford Gas Company, some areas in the City and to the north of London, and a large area of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, running north to south from Amersham to Ascot and east and west from Uxbridge to Maidenhead. Almost half the territory and over four-fifths of the new Board’s customers and plant were taken over from the Gas Light & Coke Company and, in many ways, the additions were a rational development of the process of amalgamation which had stopped in 1932. Indeed, the Gas Light & Coke Company had long cast envious eyes on the ‘Romford Corridor’, which split its territory, but the Romford Company had staunchly repulsed all overtures. With the publication of the Gas Bill the threat of Heyworth’s large ‘Metropolitan Board’ disappeared.