Why it’s essential to research a property’s planning status

Before buying it’s essential to research the planning situation.  Skip this and you could be in for nasty surprise with massive new developments scheduled down the road.

Conveyancers don’t check much in the way of planning detail in the broader area, generally only carrying out searches to confirm that  any extensions etc to the property you’re buying were built legally with the necessary local authority consents.

Conservation areas, listed buildings, planning applications etc

There’s a very useful new online tool that can provide extensive planning data – for things like planning applictaions, brownfield sites, conservation areas, listed buildings etc.  At present this only covers mainland England.

Bear in mind that this site is still under development,  so not all the datasets may be complete.

To access the full rnage of services the main menu can be seen at:  https://www.digital-land.info/ 

You can then select either explore the planning map or search and filter data (this part is currently under development so best to keep to the map for now).

You can then select different data layers and zoom to the location you’re interested – either using the scroll on your mouse or the + and – buttons on the top left of the screen.

A full list of what is included on the map can be found at:    https://www.digital-land.info/dataset