Here's an interesting article from Picture Post magazine of 1944, outlining the controversy over the planned development of the Woodchurch Estate. I've scanned in the pages as best I can and hopefully they will be legible if you zoom in on them.
It certainly is a fascinating 'what might have been' subject. I haven't looked at the plans in great detail, but the basic choice seems to have been between Robinson's orthodox suburb, where you could enjoy privacy behind your privet hedge, and Reilly's vision of old-style village green communities where everyone joined in. Nearly 70 years on, it's hard to know what to make of the two schemes - whether one was better than the other. I think many will say that the Reilly plan seems to our cynical modern eyes rather Utopian. But in 1944, decent housing was a longed-for dream for many families in Birkenhead - including my own - and the intended attraction of the village green idea was presumably that it reflected the existing close-knit neighbourhoods in the town. I'm not sure what the eventual outcome of the planning battle was, but I remember reading somewhere that the Robinson scheme was taken over by a third planner and the present Woodchurch was the result. I suppose the big question is: If the Reilly plan had been adopted, what would the Woodchurch be like now? Incidentally, the author of the Picture Post article, Maurice Edelman, was later a Labour MP.