Planning constraints report for £19
Before you spend on drawings, find out what planning designations affect an address. We check the public datasets and tell you in plain words what each result means for your project.
£19 fixed fee, no VAT to add
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The short answer
A planning constraints report lists the designations that affect an address: conservation area, listed buildings, Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders and flood zone. Each can remove permitted development rights or add a requirement. Our fee is £19 per address, no VAT to add.
Planning constraints report
from £19
- Fixed fee
- £19
- VAT
- None to add
- Whether the address is in a conservation area, and which one
- Whether the building or a neighbour is listed, and the grade
- Whether an Article 4 direction removes permitted development rights here
- Whether protected trees stand on or beside the site
- Which flood zone the address falls in, and whether a flood risk assessment may be needed
- A plain-English note on what each result means for an extension, loft or conversion, and the next step
£19. A starting fee: we confirm one fixed figure after checking your address. The council’s own fee, where there is one, is paid to the council.
Get my fixed feeOur fee here is £19, no VAT to add. The main page for this service is on our sister site Fixed Fee Plans, run by the same team.
How the report is made
Send the address
You give us the address and what you have in mind.
Check the data
We check each designation in the national planning datasets and note the date of each record.
Cross-check
Where the data is thin, we look at the council’s own map or register before we call a result clear.
Write it up
Each result is explained for your project, with the permitted development right it affects.
Next step
The report ends with what to do next, and whether to buy drawings at all.
What each result changes
A conservation area is article 2(3) land, where permitted development is narrower: side extensions, roof additions and cladding all lose their right (article 2 and Class A and B of Part 1). A listed building needs listed building consent for almost any alteration, even where planning permission is not needed.
An Article 4 direction can remove a specific right, such as converting a house to an HMO or building a porch. Protected trees need the council’s consent before work, and trees in a conservation area need six weeks’ notice under the guidance.
- Conservation area: narrower permitted development, tree notice, often a heritage statement
- Listed: listed building consent for most work, which has no council fee
- Article 4: a named right removed, so a planning application is needed
- Flood zone 2 or 3: a flood risk assessment for some applications
How complete is the public data?
The national planning data service is open and free, and it is improving, but it says itself that its datasets may be incomplete. Its conservation area dataset holds 10,786 records from 157 providers and warns of duplicates and gaps. A result of “none found” is therefore not proof that nothing applies.
That is why the report states where each result came from and when, and why we check the council’s own map where a dataset is thin. For a decision that costs thousands, our pre-purchase report goes further and reads the planning history as well.
Flood zones in one paragraph
Zone 1 is land with less than a 0.1% annual chance of river or sea flooding. Zone 2 is between 0.1% and 1% for rivers, and Zone 3a is 1% or more, according to the Planning Practice Guidance. Even minor extensions can need a short, site-specific flood risk assessment where flooding is a risk.
We report the zone, and we say when the national flood zone data is older than the council’s own mapping, which it can be.
Flood risk assessment and our other reports · Heritage statement
The datasets in numbers
10,786
Conservation area records in the national dataset, from 157 data providers, with a warning that it is incomplete.
382,376
Listed building records in the national dataset, supplied by Historic England.
7,637
Article 4 direction areas in the national dataset, from 119 data providers.
Source: Article 4 direction area dataset, planning.data.gov.uk
111,375
Tree preservation zones in the national dataset, from 83 data providers.
Source: Tree preservation zone dataset, planning.data.gov.uk
780,636
Flood risk zones in the national dataset, which was last collected in 2023.
6 weeks
Notice to give the council before working on unprotected trees in a conservation area.
Source: Planning Practice Guidance: tree preservation orders and trees in conservation areas (GOV.UK)
0.1%
Annual chance of river or sea flooding below which land is flood zone 1.
Source: Planning Practice Guidance: flood risk and coastal change (GOV.UK)
OGL v3.0
The Open Government Licence under which these datasets are published.
Questions about the report
Is the report a legal search?
No. It is a planning screen from public datasets and council information, not a conveyancing search, and it does not replace one. It tells you what is likely to matter to your plans.
How long does it take?
Messages before 3pm get a reply the same working day. We confirm the delivery time when you order, and it depends on whether the council map needs a cross-check.
What if the report finds a constraint?
It does not end the project. It changes the route, usually from permitted development to a householder application, and sometimes adds a heritage or tree report. We say which.
Do you cover the whole of London?
We work across all 33 London boroughs and the surrounding councils listed on our site.
Know the constraints before you commission drawings
Send the address. We send the report for £19.