Streat was educated at Manchester Grammar School until 1913, when he left to become an office boy.
Biographer Marguerite Dupre notes that It was a bold appointment: he was only twenty-two years old, and he became the highest-ranking permanent paid official of the richest, the largest, and probably the most influential chamber of commerce in the country.
[1]Raised as a Wesleyan, like his father, but eventually becoming an Anglican, Streat married Doris Davies on 16 March 1921.
[2] When Streat left the Cotton Board in 1957, he succeeded Ernest Simon as chairman of the council of Manchester University, an institution with which he had remained connected since his first election.
He had been elected to the council in 1943 and was appointed its treasurer in 1951, thus having a significant role in creating the financial structure between government and university that allowed for the building of the radio telescope facility at Jodrell Bank.