Two ambitious newspapermen are tasked with writing a piece on town planning in the small, industrial town of Tangleton. At the town hall, the only staff member available is the odd job man, George Gribble, who gives them a guided tour that reveals more than a simple briefing could.
Their initial article takes a critical angle, highlighting the wealth and isolation of the council’s leader, Councillor Oxbold, who lives in a giant house by himself, while Gribble is one of fourteen crowded into a cramped slum dwelling. When the editors read the piece, they order Gribble to carry out a public opinion survey across the town. Instead of a representative cross-section, he ends up interviewing almost everyone, from shopkeepers to laborers, retirees to young families.
The results astonish the town’s complacent leaders, exposing widespread unhappiness with the status quo and a demand for radical changes in living conditions and public services. This is a blow to Oxbold and his colleagues, who have financial interests in keeping things as they are. Oxbold fears a Whitehall plan to demolish much of the town and replace it with council housing, so he and his allies attempt to control the narrative by sending back only those forms that praise the current arrangement.
Gribble is told he will be paid £27.10s for the polling work, money he needs to satisfy a loan shark. To shore up support ahead of municipal elections, the council invites the inventor and philanthropist Sir Timothy Strawbridge to stand for the council. Gribble struggles to gain access to Strawbridge’s house, and a chance meeting in the street leads to a chaotic ride on a road sweeper. In the mêlée, he accidentally releases the unfavourable polling forms onto the town’s streets, prompting a frantic effort to cover up.
Seeking shelter at Strawbridge’s home, Gribble encounters Strawbridge’s daughter, Jane Strawbridge, and is immediately drawn to her. After finally persuading Strawbridge to complete a form, Gribble is dismissed by his editors when it becomes clear he was the one who originally showed the newspapermen around town. A mob of angry residents, outraged by the cover-up, closes in on him, and a bailiff begins to seize his belongings.
Jane offers a path forward: Gribble should run for the council on a pro-town planning platform, with the newspaper backing his campaign. As his momentum grows, the crooked councillors move to seize the original forms to erase the evidence. Gribble’s furniture is seized by the bailiffs, including the vase that stored the polling forms, and a desperate race against time ensues to recover the documents and present them at a major town planning conference. Although Gribble cannot recover all the papers, Strawbridge records the data electronically, providing the decisive proof. In the end, the conspirators are exposed, and Gribble is celebrated by the people for challenging the status quo and driving real change.
