ABSTRACT
The extent to which all the elements of the modern development control system were in place by the mid–1930s is not often realized. The 1932 Act made control over land-use change as well as building development possible, and the definition of development prefigured the classic distinction in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and its successors. Though the phrase ‘other material considerations’ had not yet appeared, there was unlimited power to impose conditions ‘such… as they think proper to impose’ (Section 10). In the General Interim Development Order there was a clause which identified certain types of development that were always permitted, while the Act itself fixed a two-month period within which an application had to be dealt with by the local authority. There was, finally, a right of appeal to the Ministry of Health against a refusal of permission under interim control and that right extended to any decision taken under discretionary powers within an approved scheme. Certainly there were differences. There was an absence of any means of enforcement other than the sanctions imposed by failure to comply with an approved planning scheme. Though a local authority could get agreement in writing to extend the two-month period for processing an application, failure to decide in the absence of an agreement resulted in a deemed permission after eight weeks, not a deemed refusal.
