At the time it was created in 1965, Lambeth stood out as one of London’s most ambitious boroughs. Lambeth’s lead architect, Edward “Ted” Hollamby, invited George Finch to be one of two group leaders in the local area. Both Hollamby and Finch’s architecture was central to the council’s vision of building a modern, socially inclusive borough.

In January 2000, Jonathan Glancey wrote the following obituary on Hollamby in The Guardian:

“Edward ‘Ted’ Hollamby, who has died aged 78, was very much an architect of the 20th century, a public servant who believed not just in high-quality architecture but in the existence and nurturing of the public realm, of public architecture and civic design.”

In George Finch’s obituary for The Twentieth Century Society, Tom Cordell writes:

“Above my desk I have a copy of a sketch by the architect George Finch, who died this February aged 82. Drawn in the mid-sixties, it shows the interior of a flat. On the far side of the floor-to-ceiling windows a passing helicopter shows technology’s potential. On the balcony, nature is represented by some flowers and a bird which is happily resting on the railings. Indoors, it’s a convivial setting; we see a family about to have a meal together, next to a happily messy collection of books on the shelves. Looking the viewer straight in the eye, a smiling man announces: ‘What a lovely view’. The drawing is a vision of the future that also defines the artist. A lifelong socialist, George believed that a love of art, nature, knowledge and above all mankind would create a better world for all.”

Of himself, George Finch said: “I designed for everybody you know – this is the sort of house or flat I would like to live in. Everybody’s important. OK, they may be lower paid, but… all these people are very important to society.”

During the period around the formation of Lambeth Borough, government subsidies favoured the use of more economical construction methods like Large Panel System building. Using LPS to build a series of blocks across the borough, George pushed the system to its limits to create distinctive high quality housing. At Lambeth he also used more conventional techniques to build the masterful Lambeth Towers, its form of three interlocked towers expressing the joy that George felt should exist in all architecture.

The LCC was then the place to be for a socialist architect, remodelling bomb-ruined London into a fair city, with good schools and – above all – homes for all its citizens. George quickly established himself in the Housing Division with notable high-rise schemes in Stepney and Whitechapel, alongside experiments with low-rise high-density housing on the Old Kent Road.