Independant productions for ITV.

This may sound like a daft question but its one i want to know.
When did ITV allow independent productions without an ITV company to be able to be shown on the ITV network.

From what I remember nothing could be shown on ITV unless it was a presentation of an ITV company. Like Tiger Aspect production for Thames Television PLc shown after Mr. Bean this week. Im not sure if this is still the case as "The Bill" was a Thames tv production even after it lost its license and turned into an independant producer. An example of no presentation by an ITV company lately is Shed productions who produce Footballers Wives and Bad Girls.
Any ideas?

I think they've been allowed since about 1993 when ITV went through the biggest change, though they've only taken off in the past few years, same with the BBC aswell.

Now for something like Mr Bean, Thames TV has alot of credit to it anyway, as Tiger TV/Aspect wasn't that big in 1989, I also believe that they also used some Thames facilties such as The Teddington Studios, the original VHS releases were done by Thames aswell.

Though the difference in the past few years is that the Independent Productions had to be credited to an ITV station, where as now they are just credited on their own, especially more since 1998 when they dropped the "(Insert station name) Production for IT* " when they introduced the current [i t v] logo.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with BBC commissioning policy, but they are obliged to contract out a certain percentage of their programmes to independent programme-makers.