Corporation of London

The City Surveyor is responsible for the construction and management of various City non-residential properties, including those properties belonging to Bridge House estates and City Lands estates.

The Surveyor's Approval Plans are a series of folders containing plans, and sometimes supporting correspondence and specifications of works associated with the Corporation's role as landlord to the City Lands and Bridge House Estates. The plans mostly relate to alterations or new building on the Bridge House and City Lands Estates which were submitted to the Bridge House and City Lands Committees respectively for approval and very occasionally to property adjoining the Corporation's estate over which the Corporation enjoyed certain rights such as the right to light. The plans were drawn by the leasee's own architects and usually submitted with a covering letter to the relevant committee as part of their application for permission to redevelop or alter Corporation property. The application was studied by the City Architect who made a recommendation in a report to the committee to accept or reject the application. The report can usually be found in the relevant file of committee papers and the subsequent decision in the appropriate committee minutes. Occasionally the City Architect would recommend conditions and modifications to be imposed on the leasee's proposal and such conditions can sometimes found in the committee papers and in the committee files after 1958. Most of the plans submitted were for relatively minor alterations such as new room partitions, however many plans related to completely new buildings or major reconstructions of existing buildings. Most of the plans are signed and dated by the leasee's architects. Not all the proposed new building and alterations contained in the plans were carried out and sometimes this was annotated on the folder or on the plans themselves as well other facts such as the subsequent demolition or sale of the site.