Catalogue description Records of Defence Lands Service

The need to integrate the organisation of lands work in the three Service departments had been considered as early as 1958 but was overtaken by the creation of a unified Ministry of Defence in April 1964. On 1 April 1965 the Defence Lands Service formally came into being (Defence Council Instruction [DCI] (General) 15/1965), The Comptroller of Defence Lands (CDL) and the Chief Surveyor of Defence Lands (CSDL) were jointly responsible through the Permanent Under Secretary (Army) to the Deputy Secretary of State for Defence and Minister (Army) for all Service lands work; the CDL was in sole command after 1968.

The administrative staff of the Defence Lands headquarters, known as the Defence Lands Staff, together with its supporting staff of professional and technical officers in the field constituted the Defence Lands Service. Lands 1 branch of the Defence Lands Staff was formed in September 1964 at York House, Kingsway, London to control all overseas lands work for the three Services. Staffing and other establishment matters, as well as finance and planning was then delegated to Lands 4 branch, also at York House, although repsonsibility was ultimately retained by the Army Department. Other work involving land use, estate management, acquisition and disposals in the United Kingdom was continued on an interim basis by the former lands branches of the Services departments until November 1965, when the new branches were accommodated together at Tolworth Tower, Tolworth, Surrey (DCI (General) 42/1965). Lands 2 branch was responsible for professional aspects of estate management, acquisitions, and conveyancing, as well as providing a drawing and records office for land in the United Kingdom. Lands 3 branch took care of property disposals and policy aspects of acquisitions and land use.

The reorganisation of the local Lands office in the United Kingdom took much longer to integrate because of the complex issues of grading, transfer and redundancy of professional and technical staffs (see WO 32/19327); the final district office to be integrated was at Catterick and that opened in January 1967. Service lands were divided into 19 districts, controlled by a district office (and a sub-office when necessary) in the charge of the Defence Land Agent. The districts were grouped into 6 topographical regions: Southern, Eastern, Western, Northern, Scotland and Northern Ireland; although Northern and Eastern region were combined in September 1969.

In 1971 the Defence Lands Committee was set up under the chairmanship of Lord Nugent of Guildford to review defence land holdings in the United Kingdom, especially in terms of training areas and access to national parks; it reported in July 1973. The majority of its recommendations were accepted by Government, apart from the contentious issue of transferring the RAC Gunnery School from Lulworth (Cmnd 5714). In the mean time when the Property Services Agency of the Department of the Environment (PSA) had been established in February 1972 it had incorporated the regional organisation of the Defence Lands Service and the remaining administrative staff had become DS 23 branch of the Defence Secretariat. The post of Comptroller of Lands, which had existed in the War Office from 1908, became defunct.

In 1977 the branch was renamed Defence Lands and in 1984 moved from Tolworth to Chessington. It was renamed Personnel and Logistics (Defence Lands) and in 1988 it took back responsibility for managing the defence estate from PSA. In 1992 their title changed again to Infrastructure and Logistics (Lands) shortly before merging with (IL) Estates to become the Defence Land Service once more. The Defence Estates Organisation, which combined the DLS and the Defence Works Service, was set up as defence support agency in 1997 at Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.