Hastings Borough Council: Plans submitted for approval under buildings regulations...

dhc62/DH/C/6/2

Hastings Borough Council: Plans submitted for approval under buildings regulations bylaws, 1937-1948

Apr 1937 - Jun 1948

This series consists of plans submitted to Hastings County Borough for permission to build new streets and buildings, between 1938, when a new sequence of serial numbers was begun, and 1948 when the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was implemented. Later plans are in DH/C/40.

DH/C 6/2

English

When an application, with a plan, was submitted to the Surveyor's Office (or its successor), it was assigned a serial number which was marked on the file and entered in a register in DH/C/9. The serial numbers ran in a continuous series to 14,000 which was assigned in May 1938 (DH/C 6/1/1-14000). A new series was then begun which reached 2478 in June 1948 (DH/C 6/2/1-2478). With the implementation of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, the practice of numbering plans within annual series was adopted (DH/C/40). The registers, 1851-1976 (DH/C/9/1-27) contain more information than given here, in particular the names of owners and of the agents (surveyors, architects, etc) applying on their behalf. The outcome of the Council's consideration of the application was added to the register.

In the early 1950s, the department created a card index to the applications, probably based on the buildings as they appeared in valuation lists or rate books. This card index is now DH/C/5/1. The pre-printed cards have a header line for the street name and building name or number. Rows beneath have boxes for application number, nature of application, date and decision. A major exercise was undertaken to match plans, then already up to a century old, to the standing buildings. Early plans and register entries were imprecise; in the nature of applications for new building, sites often had not been assigned street names and numbers; and some street names and numbering changed subsequently. Notes appear on the registers and the files of the clerks' identifications.

Unfortunately these serial numbers were not given in the minutes and reports of the committee which considered each application, the Roads Committee and its successors (DH/B/24), though these lists may in some circumstances be helpful in locating a file, as at some periods they include the name of the applicant and/or agent.

In the late 1990s, this card index was keyed by Museum volunteers into an Excel spreadsheet, used as if it was a sheet of paper with tab stops. Each line did not constitute a 'record', as information was not carried down from the header line to each of the applications below. In 2003/4 Record Office staff used this spreadsheet as the basis of a list in serial number order. This process entailed considerable manipulation, first to turn each row into a 'record' - of which there were some 33,000 - then to sort these into serial-number order, then to conflate multiple entries to one file (e.g. for the layout of a new road and for each of the first 10 houses in the road). Numerous discrepancies were resolved and gaps filled by reference to the cards, the registers and the plans, for example where the serial number and the date were incompatible. Since the purpose of the card index was to trace the development of what was standing, not all applications were taken into it, for example those for temporary structures which were no longer standing.

The resulting catalogue therefore reflects street names and numbering as they were in the early 1950s. It has not been checked back against the register or the plans. Errors may remain: from initial entry into the registers, from the clerks' transcription and identifications in the 1950s, from the volunteers' transcription in the 1990s and from the Record Office's semi-automated editing of the spreadsheet. Before the spreadsheet was collapsed into a single record for each file, each record was assigned a running number which has been retained in the CALM database (in the field Custodial History) for the record into which other records were collapsed. Where the catalogue record has been taken from the register or the file, that is so recorded as Custodial History. Disc copies of the spreadsheet in its intial form and at some intermediate stages are kept at the Record Office.

A few files are marked as 'Missing on transfer', but a greater number are absent.

Administrative practice varied over time as to how amended or resubmitted plans were recorded. First they were given a new number, then they were silently added to the original file, leading to several dates of decision for the same file (the convention is to enter the earliest date as Date and the later date(s) under Description, finally letters, A, B, etc. were assigned, leading to additional files. Generally the description of the works to be undertaken has not been edited, so that, for example, where three records, each for a House, have been collapsed into one of them, 'House' has not been changed to '3 houses'.