Hastings County Borough Council: plans submitted under the Town Planning Act 1948...

dhc40c/DH/C/40

Hastings County Borough Council: plans submitted under the Town Planning Act 1948 and building by-laws, 1954-1956

1954-1956

DH/C 40

English

Deposited by Hastings Borough Council

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 initial form and at some intermediate stages are kept at the Record Office.

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. 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 Council's decision on the application was added to the register. Some applications gave rise to correspondence which went into a separately numbered file, in the TP series. This number was entered in the register, and in the Town Planning Committee's papers was added after the plan number, eg, 56/599/574. The minutes of the Town Planning Committee (DH/B 50 series) contain much the same information, though its recommendation may have been varied by the Council.

In the late 1990s, the card index was keyed by Hastings 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 (eg for the layout of a new road and for each of the first 10 houses in the road). For the first series, 1851-1937, and for the second down to February 1947, 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.

DH/C 40 has not yet been edited as thoroughly. Most duplicate numbers from the card index have been resolved by reference to the registers. A few have not been. In these cases, the other, untraced, plan has been given the suffix 'X'. They are DH/C 40/51/146X, 59/452X, 59/654X, 60/652X and 60/662X. There are over 3800 gaps in the run of plan numbers found in the card index. Records for these missing numbers have been included here, with the title 'Plan number not in index'. There is a possibility that some plans for which there are descriptions here have wrong numbers, the correct number being one which does not appear in the index. These gaps may in due course be filled from the plans, the registers or the minutes of the Town Planning Committee, DH/C 50.

This list 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. The presence of a description does not mean that the plan has been deposited, nor does the absence of a description mean that it has not been.

As a general rule, amended or resubmitted plans were registered with the letters, A, B, etc. added to the original number. In some cases the plans may be the original ones amended and so renumbered. Where there are two plans, they may both be in the same envelope.

The date given here is usually the date on which the application was considered by committee.

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'.