Checking whether a site is on a brownfield land register

Every local planning authority in England has to keep a brownfield land register, publish it as open data, and review it at least once a year. The Town and Country Planning (Brownfield Land Register) Regulations 2017 set the rules, and the useful part for a developer is Part 2, because an entry there grants permission in principle for housing without anyone submitting a planning application.

A brownfield land register check therefore answers two different questions. Is the council already treating this site as suitable for residential development, and does it carry a live grant of permission in principle. The answers sit in different parts of the same published file.

What a brownfield land register is and who keeps it

The duty comes from sections 14A and 14B of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, inserted by the Housing and Planning Act 2016, with the detail in the 2017 Regulations. Each authority prepares and maintains a register for its own area.

Registers are published in a prescribed open data format, which means a CSV file with standard column headings rather than a document. Expect fields for the site reference, name and address, coordinates, site area in hectares, ownership status, planning status, deliverability, and minimum and maximum net dwellings.

That standardisation is the reason the register is worth using. You can download several neighbouring authorities' registers, concatenate them, and search for sites by size, dwelling capacity or planning status in a few minutes. Find them on each council's planning policy pages, and check the publication date on the file rather than the page.

Part 1 and Part 2 of the register

The register has two parts and they do entirely different things.

Part 1 lists all previously developed land the authority considers appropriate for residential development. Regulation 4 sets the criteria: the land must be previously developed, it must have an area of at least 0.25 hectares or be capable of supporting at least five dwellings, and it must be suitable, available and achievable for residential development.

Those three words have defined meanings. Suitable covers land allocated in the development plan, land with planning permission for housing, land with permission in principle, or land the authority otherwise considers appropriate. Available means the owner or developer has expressed an intention to sell or develop, without ownership constraints that would prevent it. Achievable means development is likely to take place within 15 years of the entry.

Part 2 is a subset. It contains only those sites the authority has decided to allocate for permission in principle, and that decision carries publicity and consultation obligations before the entry is made.

Most registers have a substantial Part 1 and a very short Part 2. Some authorities have never entered a site in Part 2 at all.

What entry in Part 2 actually grants

An entry in Part 2 grants permission in principle for housing-led development on that site, by operation of the Town and Country Planning (Permission in Principle) Order 2017.

Permission in principle settles three things only: the location, the land use, and the amount of development, expressed as a range of dwellings. Everything else is left to a subsequent application for technical details consent, and at that stage the authority cannot revisit the matters already settled in principle.

Two duration points matter commercially. Permission in principle granted through a register entry runs for five years, while permission in principle granted on application runs for three. Verify both against the current text of the Order, because the durations have been amended before.

There are limits on what permission in principle can cover. It is for residential-led development, so schemes where housing is not the predominant use fall outside it, and it is not available for development that requires environmental impact assessment or an appropriate assessment under the habitats regime. Where a site carries flood risk, the technical details stage will still require a Flood Risk Assessment and, where relevant, the sequential test, so a Part 2 entry removes an argument about principle rather than an evidence requirement.

How sites are added and reviewed

Authorities review their registers at least annually, and the review is where sites appear and disappear.

The process is usually desk-based. Officers take the strategic housing land availability assessment, the planning permissions granted in the previous year, the allocations in the emerging plan, and any submissions received, and test each against the regulation 4 criteria. Sites that have been built out come off. Sites where the owner has withdrawn come off.

For Part 2, the additional steps are publicity and consultation. Before entering a site, the authority must publicise it, notify owners and occupiers, consult the relevant bodies, and take representations into account. That is what makes the grant of permission in principle lawful, and it is also why authorities are cautious about using Part 2.

Check the vintage of any entry. A register published in the current year may carry entries assessed two or three cycles ago, and the deliverability column can be stale.

Asking for a site to be considered

There is no statutory application process for getting a site onto a register, which surprises people. In practice authorities accept submissions and many run a call for sites alongside the annual review.

What to send, and why each item matters:

1. A site location plan with a red line and the area in hectares, so the 0.25 hectare threshold can be tested.
2. Evidence of ownership or control, and a written statement of intention to sell or develop, which addresses the availability limb.
3. An indicative capacity, with a minimum and maximum net dwelling figure and a short explanation of how it was derived.
4. A constraints summary covering access, flood risk, contamination, ecology and heritage, with the mitigation route for each.
5. A delivery statement with an indicative programme inside the 15-year window.
6. A note on previously developed land status, with historic mapping or photographs where the previous use is not obvious.

Ask explicitly whether the authority will consider the site for Part 2 as well as Part 1, and what its policy on Part 2 entries is. Many councils will say they do not use Part 2, which is a useful answer to have in writing before you spend anything.

Previously developed land status is the argument worth preparing properly. Land occupied by a permanent structure and its curtilage qualifies, while agricultural buildings, mineral workings and land where the remains have blended into the landscape are excluded. Former industrial buildings may also carry heritage interest, in which case a Heritage Statement will be needed at application stage whatever the register says.

Using register entries as evidence

The register is a statement by the authority about its own area, published under a statutory duty, and that makes it usable in argument.

Three uses that come up regularly. In a housing land supply dispute, Part 1 entries are the council's own assessment of what is deliverable and on what timescale, and a site the council has described as achievable within five years cannot easily be reclassified as undeliverable when it suits. In a sequential test or an urban capacity argument, the register shows what brownfield capacity the authority itself has identified. And on an individual application, an entry recording a dwelling capacity range is evidence of the council's view of acceptable density on that site.

Registers across neighbouring authorities also make a serviceable land search tool for a specific search: sites of a given size, with stated capacity, that the council already regards as suitable for housing.

Where the register stops being useful

Be clear about the limits before building anything on it.

A register is not a complete inventory of brownfield land. It records land the authority considers appropriate for residential development, so a brownfield site suited to employment or mixed use may not appear at all, and a site whose owner has not engaged fails the availability test however developable it is.

Part 1 entry grants nothing. It carries no presumption and confers no permission, and an application on a Part 1 site is determined in the ordinary way.

Data quality varies. Coordinates, areas and ownership fields are completed to different standards by different authorities, and boundaries are sometimes indicative. Treat the register as a lead rather than as a title document, and confirm the site extent from HM Land Registry.

And a Part 2 entry does not remove the technical work. Access, drainage, contamination, ecology, biodiversity net gain and design all arrive at the technical details stage, and the permission in principle simply means nobody can argue about whether housing belongs there.

PlanScope can draft the technical details supporting documents once the constraints are known, for review before submission. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a brownfield site is likely to need.