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What is a brownfield land register? (And how to actually use one)

A free, public list of sites your council has already decided could take housing — and almost nobody works it properly. Here is what it is, what it definitely is not, and how to turn an entry into a number.

If you develop in England and you have never opened a brownfield land register, you are ignoring a list of sites your local council has already decided are suitable for housing. It is free, it is public, and hardly anyone works it properly.

What the register actually is

Since 2017, every local planning authority in England has been legally required to keep and publish a register of previously-developed land that it considers appropriate for residential development. The duty comes from the Town and Country Planning (Brownfield Land Register) Regulations 2017.

The register has two parts:

Each entry carries the site address, its area in hectares, an estimated dwelling range, ownership status, and whether planning permission already exists.

The part everyone gets wrong. Being on Part 1 is not planning permission. It is the council's opinion that housing could work there. It also says nothing about whether the owner wants to sell. A register entry is not an offer, and treating it as one is the fastest way to waste a month.

Why so few people use it

Not secrecy — friction. Each of the 300-plus authorities publishes its own register separately, on its own website, in its own format, with its own column names and its own update schedule. Some publish clean CSVs. Some bury a PDF three clicks deep in a planning policy page. Comparing two neighbouring boroughs by hand is tedious; comparing thirty is a week of work nobody does.

That friction is exactly why the data stays useful. Sites that would be picked over instantly if they appeared on a portal sit on registers for years.

How to read an entry properly

FieldWhat it tells youWhat it doesn't
HectaresSite area as the council recorded itUsable area after constraints
Min/max net dwellingsThe council's own capacity estimateWhat your scheme would get
Planning permission statusWhether consent already existsWhether it is still live
Ownership statusPublic or private ownershipWho the owner is, or their intentions
DeliverableCouncil believes it could come forward in 5 yearsThat anything is actually happening

The constraints that kill register sites

Most entries that look attractive die on one of four things. Check these before you get attached:

Turning a register entry into a number

A site is only interesting at a price. The honest route from entry to number:

  1. Sanity-check the capacity. The council's dwelling figure is a planning-policy estimate, not a design. Test it against the site's actual shape, access and context.
  2. Get real end values. HM Land Registry Price Paid data gives you what genuinely sold nearby, free, with addresses and dates. Use recorded sales rather than asking prices.
  3. Work the residual. Gross development value, minus build cost, minus fees and finance, minus your required profit. What remains is the most the land can be worth to you.
  4. Find the owner. Ownership status is on the register; Land Registry title records do the rest for a few pounds.

England has no zoning, which trips up anyone arriving from a zoned system. There is no code that tells you what is permitted. The Local Plan sets policy, the Use Classes Order governs use, and every application is judged on its merits.

Doing this at scale. GoSiteHunt pulls the brownfield registers across England and Wales, ranks them by size, planning status, council deliverability and road frontage, and nets off green-belt, Flood-Zone-3 and listed-building constraints — then prices the outcome off Land Registry recorded sales. It produces a shortlist and a defensible starting number, not a planning decision.

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