A designations checklist before exchanging contracts

A site designations due diligence checklist is not the same thing as a conveyancing search pack. The standard local authority search will tell you about a tree preservation order, a listed building and a conservation area, because those are registrable local land charges. It will not tell you that the site sits in a nutrient neutrality catchment, that the Environment Agency maps half of it as functional floodplain, or that the only usable access crosses land safeguarded for a road scheme. Those are the things that stop a self-build plot being developable, and you have to go and look for them.

The work takes a day or two and costs very little compared with the price of the land. Do it before exchange, not after.

What the standard searches actually cover

The local land charges register and the standard enquiries of the local authority cover a defined list. Planning permissions and refusals on the site, building regulation entries, enforcement and stop notices, tree preservation orders, conservation area designation, listed building status, section 106 agreements, smoke control orders, highway adoption and nearby road schemes, and some Article 4 direction information.

That is a useful list and an incomplete one. The searches are a record of charges and of the authority's own decisions. They are not a survey of environmental designations, because most designations are made by other bodies and are not charges on the land.

A drainage and water enquiry adds the sewer and water main position and the connection point. A coal mining report covers coalfield areas. An environmental or flood screening report from a commercial provider aggregates some public data, usefully but at a level of generality that does not answer a development question.

The datasets to check yourself

All of these are free, public and quick, and a self-builder can run them without a consultant.

Record each check with a screenshot, the date and the layer name. That record becomes the constraints appendix in your planning application and the evidence your lender's valuer will want.

Two of these need interpretation rather than a yes or no answer. An SSSI designation means little until you read what the site is notified for, which is the point made in our note on reading an SSSI citation. And the ancient woodland inventory is accurate in the middle and unreliable at the edges, as set out in our note on testing ancient woodland inventory boundaries.

Designations that can stop a scheme outright

Some constraints are not mitigation problems. They are reasons not to buy.

• Land within Flood Zone 3b, the functional floodplain, where new dwellings are not acceptable in policy terms.
• A scheduled monument on or immediately adjacent to the developable area, where scheduled monument consent is needed from the Secretary of State and is rarely given for new housing.
• Ancient woodland or veteran trees on the site, which national policy treats as irreplaceable habitat.
• Green Belt land, where a new isolated dwelling faces a policy test that most self-build schemes cannot meet.
• A nutrient neutrality or water neutrality catchment where no credits or mitigation are available, which has stalled housing permissions in several catchments.
• Land within a safeguarding direction for a major infrastructure scheme, which removes the authority's discretion to grant permission.
• Registration as a town or village green, or designation as Local Green Space.

Any one of these needs resolving before money changes hands. A seller who markets a plot as having development potential is not warranting that it has any.

Designations that add cost and time rather than preventing development

The larger group is the one that makes a scheme slower and more expensive without making it impossible.

Conservation area and National Landscape designations raise the design bar and usually add a heritage or landscape document. Flood Zone 2 brings a Flood Risk Assessment and finished floor level requirements. An Air Quality Management Area brings an assessment and sometimes mitigation. Potential contamination brings a desk study and often intrusive investigation. Bat roost potential in an existing building brings a survey season that can delay a start by months. An Article 4 direction removes permitted development rights you may have been counting on. Mandatory biodiversity net gain applies to most schemes and needs on-site habitat or purchased units.

Price these in rather than discovering them. On a small self-build the total cost of technical evidence can be a meaningful proportion of the land price, and a plot that looks competitively priced before the constraint work often is not afterwards.

The questions to put to the authority in writing

Searches answer what is recorded. A pre-application enquiry answers what the authority thinks, and the written response is worth having in the file.

Ask these questions explicitly. Is the site in a conservation area, an Article 4 area, a safeguarding or consultation area, or any mineral safeguarding area. Which policies of the adopted plan apply to it, and is it allocated or within a settlement boundary. What is the current community infrastructure levy rate for residential development and what exemptions apply to self-build. What does the local validation checklist require beyond the national list. Is there any planning history, including pre-application advice given to others. Does the authority consider the principle of a dwelling acceptable here.

Keep the questions factual and separate the opinion question from the fact questions, because an officer can answer the facts quickly and may need longer on the principle. The equivalent approach for archaeology is covered in our note on Historic Environment Record searches.

Recording the answers for the lender and the valuer

Self-build lending is released in stages and the lender's valuer will ask about planning risk. A short constraints note, two or three pages, listing each designation checked, the source, the date and the consequence, does three jobs at once.

It supports the valuation. It becomes the basis of the planning statement when you apply. And it gives you a record of what you knew at exchange, which matters if a dispute with the seller arises later.

Include the negatives. A line saying the site is not within any statutory ecological designation, with the date and the layer checked, is as useful as a line identifying one.

Structuring the contract around what is unresolved

Where a constraint cannot be resolved before exchange, the contract is the place to handle it.

The usual structures are a conditional contract, where completion depends on obtaining a satisfactory planning permission within a long-stop period, an option agreement giving you the right but not the obligation to buy, and an exclusivity agreement buying time to complete the investigations. Price adjustment mechanisms tied to the consented unit numbers or to abnormal costs are common on larger plots.

Define satisfactory carefully. A permission subject to a condition requiring off-site highway works that cost more than the land is not a satisfactory permission, and a definition that refers only to a grant of planning permission leaves you exposed. Take legal advice on the drafting.

The honest position on all of this is that no amount of desk work removes every risk. Survey seasons, consultee responses and officer judgement are not knowable in advance. What desk work does is tell you which risks you are taking, which is the difference between a priced risk and an unpriced one.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority and take professional advice before exchanging contracts.

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