Catalogue description Records of the Crown Estate Paving Commission

When the lease of Marylebone Park to the Duke of Portland expired in 1811, three Acts (53 George III, c 62 and 121, amended by 56 George III, c 128) were passed to establish a new park, and to authorise the building and letting of houses by Commissioners (appointed by the Lords of the Treasury and including representatives of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests), and to improve communications between the park and Charing Cross. Work began on laying out a new park in 1812. The Acts included provision for a sewer in the new park to relieve the strain new buildings would place on the existing King's Scholar Pond Sewer. This work was undertaken by the Regent's Park Sewer Commission, appointed by the New Street Commissioners. By 1824, the work on the park and buildings was complete, and a further Act (5 George IV, c 100) was passed to transfer the duties of maintaining roads, sewers, lighting etc., providing water supplies and refuse collection, and maintaining the ornamental gardens, from the existing local authorities to a new commission to be called the Crown Estate Paving Commission.

The Paving Commissioners are appointed by the Lords Commissioner of the Treasury, and include a Junior Lord of the Treasury, representatives of the Crown Estate Commissioners (previously the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues) and non-official Commissioners drawn from amongst the leaseholders of the estate. From 1825 to 1851, the Commissioners of the Admiralty were made joint Commissioners, following legislation that made the Admiralty non-rateable for the purposes of the Act, at a time when the remit of the Paving Commission included Admiralty property in Whitehall.

The Commission was empowered to levy rates upon the buildings in the Crown Estate from Whitehall to Regent's Park to provide the necessary funds for these purposes. Today, the Commission levies rates on property in the more reduced area for which it remains responsible. Acts of 1825, 1828 and 1832 (6 George IV, c 38; 9 George IV, c 64; 2 William IV, c 56) extended the remit of the Commission to cover New and Old Palace Yards and other areas of Crown property in Westminster, the site of Carlton Palace, Richmond Terrace, Cockspur Street and Great George Street. A final Act of 1851 (14 & 15 Victoria, c 95) repealed its predecessors, and re-appointed the Commission with similar powers in the reduced area for which it still has responsibility today (the area of Regent's Park between the Outer Circle and - clockwise from Gloucester Gate - Albany Street, Marylebone Road, Allsop Place and Park Road, to Hanover Gate). Responsibility for areas for which the Commission was formerly responsible reverted to the appropriate local authorities.