Catalogue description Education Department and successor: Elementary Education, Compulsory Purchase Files

Alphabetically under counties, the Welsh counties following the English; London files are listed between those for Lincolnshire and Middlesex.

The procedure for School Boards proposing to purchase lands for the purposes of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, was laid down in Section 20 of that Act and continued in subsequent Education Acts. A petition was to be presented to the Education Department by the School Board praying for an Order to be made authorising them, the School Board, to put in force the powers of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845, and the Acts amending the same, which apply to the purchase and taking of lands otherwise than by agreement.

After 1903, when School Boards were abolished, petitions were presented by Local Education Authorities to the Board of Education, whose Orders continued to be confirmed by Act of Parliament up till 1915. There were no new provisional Orders between then and 1919, when a new procedure for confirmation by Sealed Order began (Education Act, 1918, section 34); papers relating to compulsory purchase cases have since then been put on the files for the schools concerned.