DEPOSITED PLANS

<p>For deposited plans not found in this series readers should consult C299 - British Waterways records, and individual copies of plans relating to areas may be located within certain parish and local authority collections</p>

Parliamentary standing orders at various dates required promoters of bills to authorise public undertakings which would affect property rights to deposit details of the property which they proposed to acquire with the clerk of the peace of the appropriate county. The promoters were to deposit a plan of the project and a book of reference naming the owners and occupiers of whose lands were to be purchased by agreement or compulsion. These documents were to be deposited prior to the parliamentary session in which the bill was to be introduced. There are almost one thousand two hundred deposited plans for the West Riding in the period 1792 - 1880's alone. Up to the 1830's the most numerous are turnpike road plans (listed seperately under the turnpike index "T.I."), with the first deposits dating from 1806. In the 1840's and 1850's the deposits are predominantly of railway construction with these in turn being superseded by local authority, gas, water and tramway schemes from the 1860's onwards.

From the 1870's local act procedure was complemented by provisional orders which could be obtained in respect of gas, water and electricity undertakings, copies of some of which are held in this series.