East Sussex County Council: papers of Lionel Hugh Dorian, Area Planning Officer,...

Lionel Dorian's ESCC files, DL/A17, passed to Lewes District Council on the transfer of planning powers from the County Council following local government reorganisation in 1974. They include several files relating to attempts to control development in the Bishopstone area. The deposit also included two files on the same subject respectively maintained by the clerk and surveyor of Seaford UDC, and these have been appended to DL/A17 in the likelihood that the merger was made by Lewes DC, the inheritor body, as files relating to the same business.

<p>Lionel Dorian's description of arrangements for local planning between 1948 and 1988, with a synopsis of his career, written at the request of ESRO in 2004, has been added here as DL/A/17/12 below.</p>

On the retirement of Lionel Hugh Dorian, Principal Planning Officer, in 1988, the Planning Department of Lewes District Council deposited a group of files relating to planning business in the district undertaken by several local authorities before 1974 (ACC 5118). Mr Dorian had until 1974 served in the Area Planning Office of ESCC, and the deposited files passed to him on his appointment to Lewes in 1974. The files have three distinct origins, and have been listed in three groups:

DL/A/16: files of Paul White, Engineer and Surveyor, Chailey RDC

DL/A/17: files of Lionel Hugh Dorian, Area Planning officer, ESCC

DL/A/18: file of N C Walsh, Town Clerk, Lewes Borough Council. Lionel Dorian was born on 26 July 1928 and educated at the County Grammar School, Lewes. In October 1945 he joined the Planning Department of East Sussex County Council as a draughtsman, and did National Service with the Royal Air Force, mainly in Germany, between 1946 and 1948. He re-joined ESCC in 1948, was appointed a planning officer with Reigate Borough Council in 1955 and joined the London Borough of Sutton in 1958. In 1960 he returned to Sussex as a planning officer with Cuckfield UDC, and the following year re-joined the County Council, working mainly in the Lewes-based Area Planning Office, liaising with the four local councils whose districts constituted its area of responsibility.

When planning powers passed to District Councils in 1974, Mr Dorian moved to Lewes District Council as principal planning officer, responsible for development control and its enforcement. For three years after his retirement in 1988 he was commissioned by Lewes DC on a consultancy basis dealing solely with planning appeals.