The "King George V" class was the result of a design process that began in 1928. Under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, a "holiday" from building capital ships was in force through to 1931. The battleships of the British Navy consisted of only those old battleships that had been kept after the end of World War I, plus the two new, but slow s. In 1928, the Royal Navy started considering the requirements for the warships that it expected to start building in 1931.