Mary Riley, who has died aged 101, was a pioneer in the field of town and country planning, and the first woman to be appointed a county officer in England and Wales, in 1973.
She was also the first female chair of the Town and Country Planning Association (1983-86). It was on her watch that the TCPA launched the national Planning Aid service to give voice to communities affected by top-down decisions.
Born in Liverpool, Mary was the daughter of Edith and Tom Burns, a purser in the merchant marine. It was a musical household, and at the age of six she was taken to a concert at St George’s Hall, afterwards shaking hands with Sergei Rachmaninov.
She excelled at Holly Lodge girls’ school, then studied geography at the London School of Economics, which had been relocated to Cambridge due to the blitz. Living in Liverpool through the depression, then witnessing the wartime bombing on the city’s port, sparked Mary’s interest in seeking ways to reduce social and economic inequalities and rebuild for a fairer society.
Graduating in 1943, Mary did wartime service at St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh. Once the second world war had finished, she took the civil service exams – coming, she claimed, third from top in the country – and joined the regional office in Birmingham working on social and economic planning for the West Midlands.
Mary spotted exciting prospects in the newly created local planning authorities, and in 1949 successfully applied to be assistant county planning officer for Staffordshire council, leading their research team.
By 1973 she was county planning officer for Staffordshire. Following reorganisation in 1974, all English planning departments had to prepare a longterm strategy. As chief officer, Mary led the team that enabled Staffordshire to be the first English county to do so, in the same year.
As chair and later vice-president of the TCPA, Mary supported the work of Tony Gibson in his development of Planning for Real, a radical initiative in which local communities participate in working towards the future in their local area, and was a founder trustee of the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation set up in 1988.
I came to know Mary during my time as director of the TCPA (1998-2001). She was a committed Anglican and a true Christian socialist.
Her first marriage, to Dennis Riley, ended with his death. Her second husband, Desmond Matthews, survives her.
