On 24^th April 1945, major plans were unveiled for the reconstruction of Stoke-on-Trent. This pioneering document had been prepared by the council's chief planning officer, James Plant, an academic architect who was under no illusion that he would be the man who would transform Stoke-on-Trent into a powerhouse for regional development and enterprise.

Key to his strategy was to create Hanley into a city centre. To do this he would relocate the civic administration to an all-purpose council HQ south of Hanley Town Hall on what is now the sprawl of John Street car park. This new building included central courts, conference facilities and banqueting suites. Hanley itself would correspond with structured commercial, retail and entertainment centres serviced by a ring road. 

The relocation of Hanley High School would provide space for a modern transport and communications centre, while the expansion of land around Port Vale Football Club would include new swimming pools and a stadium 'three times the size of the Victoria Hall', all combining with a central market hall. Finally there was to be a tree-lined avenue connecting Stoke railway station via Hanley Park to the entrance of the new four-storey civic centre.

Similar plans were drawn for Longton and Burslem but unfortunately post-war austerity defeated Plant's imaginative creation and it was shelved for fifteen years until a spirited new council leader name Albert Bennett resurrected them.

Bennett was born in Leicester in 1901 and worked in the coal mines from the age of 13. His confrontational nature inevitably drew him to union activity when, during the General Strike of 1926, he was made secretary for the Leicester Council for Action giving his colliery boss the best reason of all to sack his insistent troublemaker.

As a member of the Labour Party, Bennett turned his union background into a political career when he was sent to Stoke-on-Trent in 1935 as a representative of the railwaymen's union.

By the time he was elected to the council in 1944 he had virtually taken over all the major positions in Stoke-on-Trent's Labour Movement including presidency of the then powerful North Staffs Trades Council. He was a natural organiser and quickly realised the advantage of having a shield of lieutenants recruited from the dominant railway unions. Between 1960 and 1970 there were 14 locomotive men in what was jokily called the train-driver's council. This gang of plate-men and shunters became celebrated inasmuch as it included such well-known future Lord Mayors and council leaders as Horace Barks, Tom Beddow, Arthur Moran, Arthur Cholerton and Jim Westwood. It was even said that certain rail lines had to be suspended when the locomotive councillors were called to a full council meeting at the same time.

From this unassailable platform Albert Bennett set about changing the face of Stoke-on-Trent. Seeing that little physical development had occurred and certainly nothing of any architectural value had been built since 1910, his philosophy was simple - too many buildings of little economic value were occupying sites of great monetary value; the old should move over for the new.

Bennett backed Plant's idea of multi-occupational buildings and launched his programme in Stafford Street Hanley where, according to Plant, there were too many redundant rows of Georgian single-storey properties preventing high-rise economic progress.

He argued forcefully for modernisation against many who saw his plans as a reckless assault upon the City's architectural heritage. Purposeless buildings no matter how historic, Bennett said, should be forfeited or else Stoke-on-Trent would remain stuck in the past. The City needed to be a business centre with gardens and pedestrian zones for easy retail activity. The 1960's buzz-phrase was 'precincts of commerce and culture'. Hanley would become a radiant centre of plastic and stainless steel. He even planned a heliport near Hanley Park.

As hundreds of terraced houses were demolished a new police station and fire station, library and museum, were relocated to John Street and Bethesda Street. And Bennett's 'precinct-shopping' was integrated in a brand new bus station as the face of old Hanley changed forever.

Nor did Bennett ignore the other towns. Plant's designs for the reconstruction of Longton town centre were also implemented as the novelty of precinct shopping caught on. Similar projects were launched in Burslem starting with the controversial demolition of the Victorian market superseded by open-air leisure space. Like Longton's Bennett Precinct, Burslem's Bennett Gardens was named after the council's radical leader.

Bennett Precinct, Longton
"Immediately south of the market hall is the Bennett Precinct, a new shopping structure, by Ian Fraser & Associates, opened in 1965, and architecturally the best of the Five Towns."

Pevsner - "The Buildings of England"