§ Mr. BarronTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) who is responsible for keeping copies of 1946 interim development orders; and if they can be obtained by the public;
(2) if he will establish a national register of interim development orders;
(3) how many interim development orders issued in 1946 are still current; and if he will list them.
§ Mr. AtkinsInterim development orders, first made under the Town and Country Planning Act 1932, continued to be issued until 1 July 1948, when the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 came into force.
Interim development orders provided the earliest form of planning permission granted on application and aimed to establish a form of planning control until such time as the planning schemes, for which the local planning authorities were responsible, came into force.
All permissions granted under interim development orders before 21 July 1943 have lapsed, but permissions applied for and granted on or after that date and before 1 July 1948 were preserved by section 77 of the 1947 Act and by subsequent legislation.
No records of applications made under interim development orders were required and no information about the total number of permissions granted is currently available. Such records as there are of such permissions will be held by the successor planning authorities and we are discussing the information currently available with the local authority associations.
43WThe Department is aware of the recent concern about interim development order permissions and is examining the issue in the review of the operation of the provisions of the Minerals Act 1981 announced in "This Common Inheritance".