CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Tony Crook (town planner)

Commander of the Order of the British Empire

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 7, 2025
Entity authorityQ55313521 ↗
Source-derived summary

Anthony Derek Howell Crook, CBE, FAcSS, FRTPI, FRSA (22 December 1944 - November 2024), was a British academic and emeritus professor of town and regional planning at the University of Sheffield.

Career

Anthony Derek Howell Crook graduated from the University of Bristol in 1965 with a geography degree, before completing a master of philosophy degree in town planning at University College London in 1967; he then spent two years as a research officer in the Greater London Council's Planning Department. Crook was appointed a lecturer in town and country planning at the University of Sheffield in 1968 and became a Chartered Town Planner in 1977. In 1989, the University of Sheffield awarded him with a doctor of philosophy degree for his thesis "Improving private rented sector: the impact of changes in ownership and of local authority policies." Crook became a professor of town and country planning at the University of Sheffield, where he was also head of the Department of Town Planning until 1999, when he became Pro-Vice-Chancellor (serving until 2008). In 2010, he retired and remained at Sheffield as an emeritus professor.

Crook is a former chair of the homelessness charity Shelter (retiring in 2013), deputy chair of Orbit Group (retired 2018), and from June to December 2017 served as deputy chair of the Construction Industry Council.

Honours and awards

In 2001, Crook was elected a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute (FRTPI) and in 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. The University of Sheffield awarded him with an honorary doctor of letters (LittD) degree in 2013 and, in the 2014 New Year Honours, Crook was awarded a CBE "for services to housing and charitable governance".

Selected publications

Planning Gain: Providing Infrastructure and Affordable Housing (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tony Crook (town planner)” as commander of the Order of the British Empire. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1944, 2024, 1965, 1967—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1944, 1944-12-22—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. The account is most persuasive where Tony, Crook and town can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as commander of the Order of the British Empire. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q55313521. VIAF identifies the subject as 40801207. The Library of Congress control number is n85067953. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2024, 1965 and 1967.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tony Crook (town planner)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tony Crook (town planner) primary sources, Tony Crook (town planner) archive and Tony research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tony Crook (town planner)”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Tony Crook (town planner)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.