Charles Boot - Business Career

Business Career

Charles’ business career is detailed under Henry Boot PLC. Under its then name of Henry Boot & Sons, the firm built more houses than any other company in the inter-war period, was an international contractor, and developed Pinewood Studios. Outside the firm, he became a forceful spokesman for the housebuilding industry, supporting measures to reduce the cost of local authority housing and he was a keen advocate of building for private sale rather than for local authorities.

Charles made representations to the House of Commons on the costs of building houses. In July 1926 (a time when almost all housebuilding was for local authorities) he gave an extensive address to the Health and Housing Committee – already speaking for a firm that had “built more houses than any other firm or individual in the world”. He was a strong proponent of labour being paid by results and criticised local authorities whose contracts prohibited this. He was also critical of local authorities that overspecified and interfered with work. He contrasted Birmingham, where he could build good houses for £397 and make a profit while virtually the same house in another authority would cost £465 and he would make a loss.

Charles’s concern for the building industry’s ability to supply low cost housing for rent was addressed more than once in the closing stages of his life. He pointed to the 8,000 low-rent houses built by the Boot subsidiary, First National Housing Trust, in the six years following the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1933 and he argued for the superior economics of the private trust as compared with bureaucratic local authorities. One of his most interesting contributions was his scheme for abolishing slum areas, written in 1935. Boot proposed two new satellite towns comprising around 50,000 houses and re-housing around 250,000 people; one was to be near Waltham Abbey and the other near [[Dagenham[[. The transport proposed for the new towns was the “Railplane” the technical description sounding like the ill-fated Bennie Railplane. Sadly, neither the new towns nor the Railplane came to pass.