Town and Country Planning Act 1962

4 Surveys of planning areas and preparation of development plans

(1) Any local planning authority who have not submitted to the Minister a development plan for their area shall carry out a survey of their area and shall, within such period as the Minister may in any particular case allow, submit to the Minister a report of the survey together with a development plan for their area.

(2) Subject to the following provisions of this Part of this Act, in this Act “development plan ” means a plan indicating the manner in which a local planning authority propose that land in their area should be used, whether by the carrying out thereon of development or otherwise, and the stages by which any such development should be carried out.

(3) Subject to the provisions of any regulations made under this Act for regulating the form and content of development plans, any such plan shall include such maps and such descriptive matter as may be necessary to illustrate the proposals in question with such degree of particularity as may be appropriate to different parts of the area; and any such plan may in particular—

(a) define the sites of proposed roads, public and other buildings and works, airfields, parks, pleasure grounds, nature reserves and other open spaces, or allocate areas of land for use for agricultural, residential, industrial or other purposes of any class specified in the plan;

(b) designate, as land subject to compulsory acquisition by a Minister, local authority or statutory undertakers, any land allocated by the plan for the purposes of any of their functions (including any land which that Minister or authority or those undertakers are or could be authorised to acquire compulsorily under any enactment other than this Act);

(c) designate as land subject to compulsory acquisition by the appropriate local authority—

(i) any land comprised in an area defined by the plan as an area of comprehensive development (including any land therein which is allocated by the plan for any such purpose as is mentioned in paragraph (b) of this subsection) or any land contiguous or adjacent to any such area ;

(ii) any other land which, in the opinion of the local planning authority, ought to be subject to compulsory acquisition for the purpose of securing its use in the manner proposed by the plan.

(4) For the purposes of this section, a development plan may define as an area of comprehensive development any area which, in the opinion of the local planning authority, should be developed or redeveloped as a whole for any one or more of the following purposes, that is to say—

(a) for the purposes of dealing satisfactorily with extensive war damage or conditions of bad lay-out or obsolete development, or

(b) for the purpose of providing for the relocation of population or industry or the replacement of open space in the course of the development or redevelopment of any other area, or

(c) for any other purpose specified in the plan ;

and land may be included in any area so defined, and designated as subject to compulsory acquisition in accordance with the provisions of the last preceding subsection, whether or not provision is made by the plan for the development or redevelopment of that particular land.

(5) At any time before a development plan with respect to the whole of the area of a local planning authority has been approved by the Minister, that authority may, with the consent of the Minister, and shall, if so required by directions of the Minister, prepare and submit to him a development plan relating to part of that area; and the preceding provisions of this section shall apply in relation to any such plan as they apply in relation to a plan relating to the whole of the area of a local planning authority.