| Description | This collection contains applications for permission to develop land or property submitted to the Isle of Man Local Government Board between 1921 and 1932. The planning applications generally contain two kinds of records:
1. Plans for the structure proposed to be built or altered;
2. Letters from the architect or builder to the Local Government Board, submitting the plan and listing the construction materials to be used.
The plans are hand drawn and some are coloured with watercolours. They are sometimes complemented by a block plan, which is a sketch, coloured or not, of the property location in the area. The block plan may be in a corner of the same sheet of the main plan. They may be signed or stamped by the architect and are typically marked approved or disapproved by the Local Government Board, with a signature and date.
The plans and letters are folded and enclosed in numbered envelopes in ascending order. The envelopes also contain a brief title identifying the type of plan, the requester and if the application was approved or not.
After plan 596, inclusive, the Local Government Board began adding a sticker to the back of the plans which was completed with the date that the application was submitted, inspected and approved or not.
Records of planning applications submitted to the Isle of Man Development Board from 1936 onwards are also held by the Isle of Man Public Record Office. These include an incomplete sequence of planning applications, along with indexes and related records catalogued as S89 (planning application registers), S90 (planning application index maps), S92 (Planning Committee minutes), S93 (Special Planning Committee draft minutes), S94 (Interim Development Order permits), S95 (microfilms of some planning applications) and S96 (Special Planning Appeals Committee minutes). |
| Physical Description | Envelope: Upright paper envelopes close to DL size.
Paper: Tracing, blue-print, white and watercolour.
Drawing tools: Bottled ink, pencil and watercolours.
Generally, plans and letters are folded together. At the time of cataloguing, they were found attached to each other in the top right hand corner by a pin or a clip. These old fasteners were removed during the listing process and replaced by brass clips to assist preservation of the paper and preserve their physical order. |
| Administrative History | Concern with the organisation and planning of the Isle of Man urbanisation started in the mid-19th century with the promulgation of the Local Government Act in 1886. This Act allowed the creation of elected local authorities whose goal was the creation, maintenance and planning of public services, for example water, sewers, transportation and roads. This law was amended and revised during the next decades until updated in 1916 in the form of The Local Government Consolidation Act. In Part IV - Government of Towns - Regulations of Streets and Buildings, Sections 217 and 218, the Act gives the legal context for the planning applications in this series, forbidding the construction of any building without the submission of a plan to the Local Government Board.
From 1936, the Development Board took responsibility for Town and Country planning approvals. The Town and Country Planning (Interim Development) Regulations, Section 3, detailed the various documents and information required to submit proposed plans, describing what had been previously been done in the timeframe of this record series. |
| Custodial History | The planning function was administered by the Local Government Board until its dissolution in 1986. The function was then transferred to the Department of Local Government and Environment (1986-2010), Department of Infrastructure (2010-2015) and is currently held by the Planning and Building Control Division in the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture.
The applications in this series were first transferred to Manx National Heritage by the Local Government Board in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Manx National Heritage transferred them to the Public Record Office in 2005 to accompany the planning application series already stored at the Record Office. |