Can I get planning permission on my land?

The legal starting point

Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires decisions to be made in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. The development plan is normally the adopted Local Plan, any neighbourhood plan and the relevant minerals and waste plans.

That means the first question is never “is this a good site?” but “what does the adopted plan say about this land, and how much weight does that plan still carry?” An out-of-date plan, or one whose housing requirement is no longer being met, changes the balance considerably.

Six factors that shape the answer

Across England the same handful of factors decide most outcomes for greenfield and edge-of-settlement land:

• Policy designation — whether the land is inside a settlement boundary, allocated, safeguarded, countryside or Green Belt.
• Housing need and land supply — an authority that cannot demonstrate a five-year supply, or that fails the Housing Delivery Test, applies the presumption in favour of sustainable development differently.
• Absolute and heritage constraints — SSSIs, ancient woodland, scheduled monuments, listed buildings, conservation areas and National Landscapes all carry statutory or policy protection.
• Flood risk — the sequential and exception tests in national policy can rule out otherwise well-located land.
• Accessibility and infrastructure — safe access, walking distance to services, school and highway capacity.
• Emerging policy — a plan at Regulation 19 or examination can carry weight and can also signal where growth is going next.

What national datasets can and cannot tell you

The national planning data platform publishes Green Belt, conservation area, listed building, ancient woodland, SSSI, flood zone, brownfield register and Local Plan boundary data as open data. A free constraints check will tell you what is formally recorded at a location, and that is genuinely useful triage.

What open data cannot tell you is whether access can be achieved, what the ground conditions are, whether utilities have capacity, or how a specific officer will weigh landscape harm. Absence of a dataset record is not evidence that a constraint does not exist — it should be read as “not recorded” rather than “not present”.

A realistic sequence to follow

Working in this order avoids spending money before the cheap questions have been answered:

• Run a constraints check on the land so the obvious blockers surface first.
• Read the authority's Local Plan position: is it adopted, how old is it, and is a new plan in preparation?
• Check whether a Call for Sites window is open — allocation is often the cheapest route to value for strategic land.
• Look at comparable decisions and appeal outcomes within a few miles for the same use.
• Only then commission technical work: access, ecology, drainage, heritage.

Uses other than housing

Housing is not the only route. Change of use, roadside and drive-thru development, small commercial and storage uses, and permitted development rights can all unlock value on land that would not be allocated for housing. Class Q agricultural building conversions and the various Part 3 use class changes are worth checking before assuming a site has no potential.