Building and Planning Application Records

The 1848 Health of Towns Act allowed boroughs to introduce building bye-laws and regulations for (mainly) sanitary purposes.  Under these powers a plan would have to be submitted to the plans sub-committee of the borough for approval.

 

Sheffield adopted these powers by issuing the 1864 local building bye-laws.  The plans were to be submitted to the Plans Sub-committee of the Highways Committee from Oct. 1864.  Plans were to be submitted for all buildings built after that date.

 

Registers of building plans, 1864 onwards and planning applications/building plans 1864 onwards (with gaps).

 

You can find more detail from the downloadable document at the bottom of this page

 

 

1864 onwards

 

 

Original plans from 1864, the registers and the committee minutes are available at Sheffield Archives, 52 Shoreham Street, Sheffield.

 

 

 

The registers are large volumes; Pre-1925 building plans are mainly available on aperture cards (microfiche), later plans are available as paper files; Plans Sub-committee minutes are volumes.

 

If you wish to consult the registers of plans and the Planning Committee minutes you do not need to order them in advance, however if you wish to see a building plan, we require 4 working days advance notice to get the file for you.

 

Note also that the Archives operates a more limited service on a Saturday.  Records required on a Saturday should be ordered by the previous Thursday. Please email us at archives@sheffield.gov.uk or telephone 0114 203 9395 us to place an order.

 

Please also note that building plans from 2005 are not normally made available at Archives as they are available on the Planning and Development pages on our website. 

 

 

Yes, we can normally supply copies for private study purposes, subject to the usual copyright regulations. Please contact us at archives@sheffield.gov.uk for further information.