Interview with Brian Salter

In 1971 Brian was recruited to Milton Keynes by Fred Roche (now MKDC’s General Manager), as Forestry and Conservation Office. Brian describes problems for tree planting in the 1970s: first the dry years and then the disaster of Dutch Elm disease, he says: ‘we had 45,000 dead or dying elm trees’. MK initiated ‘a scientific view’ of tree planting methods. In 1976 Brian notes that the Government relaxed the approval process for projects under £50k and the Landscape Department could then get many projects started; great progress was made on parks when Neil Higson joined MKDC in 1975/76. Brian says: ‘he came along with a …brilliant philosophy for linear parks …the lakes settings came alive’. In 1978 Brian became Manager of the Recreation Unit; he describes some of the organisations MKDC supported, and remembers Teresa Collard, Arts and Entertainments officer at the Council. He coordinated development of MK Bowl, and began promotion of music events there from the early 1980s

Brian comments that Fred Roche had said: ‘If the city is going to be a success, it is going to be its landscape and the trees’. Brian relates an apocryphal story from about 1987, that Mrs Thatcher advised MKDC Chairman Henry Chilver that MKDC should arrange for other bodies than the Borough Concil to take over MKDC’s community assets when it closed down in 1992. MKDC duly set up the ‘community assets disposal programme’, with residuary legatees: a Parks Trust, the Community Foundation, the parishes, and the County Council. Brian says: ‘The major parks were to go to this new charitable Parks Trust, funded so that they could be operated in perpetuity’. He describes the Trust’s setting up; he became the Parks Trust’s Chief Executive in 1992. Brian is most proud of the vision for MK and the city of trees in the Master Plan: ‘landscape was to be an all-pervading feature …and I believe …we did deliver it’. He comments briefly on aspects of the parks like the concrete cows and tree cathedral, and on income generated from Parks Trust land. Brian says: ‘So [the Parks Trust] maintains agricultural heritage within Milton Keynes and will do so indefinitely’.