Town planning schemes and maps

This sub series includes printed town planning schemes and maps relating to all major town planning initiatives undertaken by Birmingham City Council following the passing of the Housing and Town Planning Act, 1909. There are also schedules of properties and land affected by the proposed schemes, and maps detailing the areas encompassed by each town planning scheme. All of the maps were prepared at the Chief Surveyor and Engineer's Office, The Council House, Birmingham. The written records and schedules of properties ought to be viewed in conjunction with the maps, as they often refer to individually numbered units of land. The schedules also refer to numbered building plans listed in the indexes and registers (see below), many of which survive in the collections of Birmingham Archives and Heritage. The maps comprise largely oversize items, and researchers using these records should be seated at the large map tables in the archives search room.

BCC/1/GG/D

BCC/1/AG/8

BCC/1/AM

Birmingham Building Plans (see card indexes (1875-1898) and registers of deposited plans (1898-1959). Please note that not all plans listed in these sources survive.

BCC/1/BM

BCC/1/AO

Public Works Committee and its sub-committees 1851 - 1974

BCC/1/BR

Town Planning Sub-Committee of the General Purposes Committee 1910 - 1911

Proceedings of Birmingham City Council 1838 - present

Estates Committee and its sub-committees 1851 - 1968

Public Health and Housing Committee (and successors) and its sub-committees 1911 - 1948

Transport Committee (and successors) and its sub-committees 1900 - 1974

Housing Inquiry Committee and its sub-committees 1913 - 1916

BCC/1/AA

BCC/1/BE

The Housing and Town Planning Act, 1909 (Part II, Sections 54 ff), empowered local authorities to draw up town planning schemes in respect of any land earmarked for development or which appeared likely to be used for building purposes. The objective was to secure proper sanitary conditions, amenity and convenience in connection with the laying out and use of the land, or of any neighbouring lands.

The Local Government Board was authorised to make regulations that controlled the procedures to be adopted. The local authority was to ensure that compensation was made to individuals or organisations whose property was affected by such a scheme. Where property was appreciated by the scheme the Corporation was authorised to recover one half of the increment.

The authors of the bill were conscious that if such powers were used without recourse to planning or official expertise, the results could prove disastrous. On the other hand, ill-considered restrictions on a scheme would put builders off working on any future development projects. It was important to secure the full cooperation of local landowners, and an elaborate procedure was set up to ensure that the views of objectors were met, giving full effect to the controlling powers of the Local Government Board. The Board was thus established as a kind of supervisory power to municipal corporations implementing town planning schemes on their own initiative.

The implementation of any town planning scheme now involved increasing interaction between the Local Government Board and local authorities, with these bodies in turn required to act in consultation with the citizens they represented. The Council was able to ask for a scheme in respect of an area, clearly defining the limits of the area in the written scheme and accompanying maps and plans; it was then to give notice to all parties with an interest in the area, either as developers, objectors or otherwise. After asking its leave, the Local Government Board was authorised to hold a local inquiry to hear any complaints, who in turn granted permission to the authority to make a scheme as it saw fit, which, if approved, was drawn up by the relevant local government officials and departments for the approval of Council.

If successful, the Council published the scheme as drafted, with an advertisement inviting objectors to communicate with the Board (with one month's space), after which the Board could give provisional approval to the scheme, either as drafted or with amendments. The Council then published the scheme as provisionally approved, again referring objectors to the Board, after which, if the Board finally approves and seals the scheme, it carried the authority of an enactment.The Act would have profound implications in terms of the town planning function in Birmingham, as it gave it marked the beginning of the implementation of much more systematic planning programmes across the city. The Council's work was aided by the extension of the city boundary in 1911, which potentially freed up a huge amount of undeveloped land 30,000 acres (of which 24,000 were undeveloped) situated on the city's lightly populated peripheral regions. The Council took a much more active role in housing Birmingham's working classes. After 1875 they had been keen to clear slums in the central areas, but lacked real authority to re-house those they evicted, preferring to leave the building of artisan's dwellings to the private sector. Throughout the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the next the pace of house building was largely outstripped by demolitions.

Although the implementation of these schemes in Birmingham was interrupted by the First World War, the 1920s and 1930s saw the construction of the first large Corporation housing estates such as Lea Village and Weoley Castle, which marked amongst the first attempts to provide mass-scale working class housing beyond the city centre areas where they traditionally lived. The 'suburbanisation' of the working classes was to have mixed results, with many feeling their new estates lacked the community networks of their old streets; others complained about the distances they now had to travel to get to work, and the resulting expense. Nonetheless, the schemes did suggest a genuine desire to regulate rapid urban growth, plan urban space and, most notably after 1918, provide 'homes fit for heroes' following the return of thousands of military servicemen after the end of the First World War.