Rescuing the Lee Valley from its years of neglect and regenerating it as a ‘great playground for Londoners’ was questionable before the Second World War.It was suggested in Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan in 1944 that ‘the Valley gives the opportunity for a great piece of regenerative planning…..every piece of land welded into a great regional reservation’.
During the early post-war period the idea lay dormant until in 1961 when Alderman Lou Sherman, Mayor of Hackney, took up the challenge to regenerate the Valley. He inspired and persuaded seventeen other local authorities to support him and in 1963 the Civic Trust was invited to undertake an appraisal of the Valley’s potential as a vast leisure and recreational resource. The Civic Trust report was extremely positive and a Bill was promoted in Parliament to establish the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority as the development body with the responsibility and the powers to deliver the vision.
Following Royal Assent to the Lee Valley Regional Park Bill in December 1966, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority was formally constituted on 1 January 1967.