keen advocate of building for private sale rather than for local authorities. Boot made representations to the House of Commons on the costs of building houses. In July 1926 (a time when almost all housebuilding was for local authorities) he gave an extensive address to the Health and Housing Committee – already speaking for a firm that had "built more houses than any other firm or individual in the world". He was a strong proponent of labour being paid by results and criticised local authorities whose contracts prohibited this. He was also critical of local authorities that overspecified and interfered with work. He contrasted Birmingham, where he could build good houses for £397 and make a profit while virtually the same house in another authority would cost £465 and he would make a loss. Boot's concern for the building industry's ability to supply low cost housing for rent was addressed more than once in the closing stages of his life. He pointed to the 8,000 low-rent houses built by the Boot subsidiary, First National Housing Trust, in the six years following the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1933 and he argued for the superior economics of the private trust as compared with bureaucratic local authorities. One of his most interesting contributions was his scheme for abolishing slum areas, written in 1935. Boot proposed two new satellite towns comprising around 50,000 houses and re-housing around 250,000 people; one was to be near Waltham Abbey and the other near Dagenham. The transport proposed for the new towns was the "Railplane" the technical description sounding like the ill-fated Bennie Railplane. Sadly, neither the new towns nor the Railplane came to pass. Pinewood Film Studios In 1934, Charles Boot embarked upon the design and construction of what would become Pinewood Film Studios located among the pine trees of the 100 acres (0.4 km²) estate of Heatherden Hall at Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire, England. Charles Boot based his designs upon what were at the time the latest ideas being employed by other film studios in the production of movies at Hollywood. Charles Boot managed to complete the work in twelve months. In the years that followed the Henry Boot company also undertook further work on both the Pinewood Film Studios and the Denham Film Studios, both of which had by then become a part of the J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Boot's Folly Charles Boot built Boot's