[1][2] Following significant population growth, largely associated with the development of the local industrial estate by The Slough Trading Co., civic leaders decided to procure a purpose-built town hall: the site they selected was open land on the south side of Bath Road situated among a row of large residential properties.

The chosen site was relatively detached from the town centre, being 0.5 miles (0.80 km) west of the main shopping areas on High Street.

[3] The project was the subject of a design competition assessed by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel and won by Charles Holloway James and Stephen Rowland Pierce.

[9] Although highly critical of what he perceived as the overdevelopment of Slough,[10] the future Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, described the architecture of the building favourably, as "a striving for unity out of chaos".

[4] The Twentieth Century Society unsuccessfully tried to have that decision overturned, saying that it believed that "the redevelopment of the town hall would be an act of vandalism to the civic centre".