Education Department and successor: Elementary Education, Compulsory Purchase Files

Compulsory purchase files containing petitions to the Education Department from school boards desirous of acquiring land in accordance with the procedure laid down in section 20 of the Elementary Education Act 1870.

Accompanying the petitions are schedules, plans of lands, statutory declarations and similar documents, correspondence with inspectors and reports from them on the sites concerned and printed copies of the provisional orders made by the Education Department and of confirming parliamentary acts.

Papers relating to compulsory purchase have since 1919 been put on the files for the schools concerned.

Alphabetically under counties, the Welsh counties following the English; London files are listed between those for Lincolnshire and Middlesex.

• Board of Education, 1899-1944
• Education Department, 1856-1899

Topics

Planning (Land and Property)

Education

The procedure for School Boards proposing to purchase lands for the purposes of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, was laid down in Section 20 of that Act and continued in subsequent Education Acts. A petition was to be presented to the Education Department by the School Board praying for an Order to be made authorising them, the School Board, to put in force the powers of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845, and the Acts amending the same, which apply to the purchase and taking of lands otherwise than by agreement.

After 1903, when School Boards were abolished, petitions were presented by Local Education Authorities to the Board of Education, whose Orders continued to be confirmed by Act of Parliament up till 1915. There were no new provisional Orders between then and 1919, when a new procedure for confirmation by Sealed Order began (Education Act, 1918, section 34); papers relating to compulsory purchase cases have since then been put on the files for the schools concerned.