> Birmingham was a boom city after the war and might have come to rival London. So why did planners deliberately sabotage its economy?<p>> Back in the 1950s and 60s, the Midlands was booming. Leicester at the time had so many jobs that employers waited at the gates of other factories to poach workers, and even chased up potential recruits who forgot to come to interviews. In the decade to 1964, service businesses around Birmingham grew faster than any other part of the country; in 1961, West Midlands households earned more on average than any other British region, including London and the South East.<p>> But all this was ended by London-based planners, who virtually banned new factories, offices and housing south of Manchester in a failed attempt to rebalance the economy. In 1960, the Government even refused Fox’s Glacier Mints permission for a new factory in Leicester to replace its existing building facing demolition for a ring road. That began the story of Fox’s decline in the city, culminating in its recent controversial decision to leave Leicester forever, and illustrates the profound damage caused to the Midlands and the British economy as a whole.