Fred Pooley

Frederick Bernard Pooley CBE (18 April 1916 – 11 March 1998) is best known as the county architect of Buckinghamshire, and for his futuristic monorail proposals for a new town in north Bucks that eventually became Milton Keynes. Pooley was born in West Ham, east London and trained at the Northern Polytechnic in the evenings, while working in the West Ham engineer's department by day. He qualified as an architect, planner and surveyor before serving with the Royal Engineers during World War II. He also qualified as a structural engineer and arbitrator.

Pooley was a supporter of mid-ranking architects and ensured that project architects' names were put on all Buckinghamshire County Council buildings, and not just that of the county architect, promoting this idea to the wider profession. He was noted for his strong support of public transport, firstly for his monorail proposals for the new city that became Milton Keynes, and later for his later role in Greater London, where he identified the growing problem of the impact of traffic on the city.