Timeline of the GPDO

You can find the timeline or history of the GPDO below. Or the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order to give it its more formal title. Until 2015 it was applicable to both England and Wales.  The 2015 version applies to England only. In Wales the 1995 version was updated in between 2006 and 2023 (see below)

The GPDO started life as the GDO in 1948 with the word ‘permitted’ added in 1995. Each major revision within the history of the GPDO will have several updates through its life. After a number of years all these amendments are rolled up into a new order. 

Please use the links below to go to dedicated pages for each revision of the GDO or GPDO since 1948. 

• The Town and Country Planning (General Development) Order 1948 – click here
        
• The Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1950 – click here
   
• The Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1959 – click here
   
• The Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1963 – click here
   
• The Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1973 – click here
   
• The Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1977 – click here
   
• The Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1988 – click here
   
• The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 – click here 
       (Still valid for Wales)
   
• The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 – click here
   
• Proposed changes to the GPDO – click here
       

The Government also publish a technical guidance document which assists to explain some of the more common aspects of the GPDO. You can view a copy on our website here. 

Summary in the history of the GPDO

It is important to understand that the versions linked above in the GPDO timeline are the original documents only. Various Statutory Instruments are issued by the Government to update the original orders during the lifetime of each order. Where we have a copy it is linked above, or we have linked directly to the National Archives record. 

Current versions of each part and each class are kept fully up to date on Planning Geek. You can view the index of the latest version here.  For ease of use, we have a PDF copy of the updated versions for 1995 and 2015, but we can’t guarantee that they are complete. We do however keep our own pages here up to date.

Updated: 28th November 2023