Checking planning before you buy a house

What your solicitor actually checks

A standard local authority search covers the property itself: its own planning history, building regulation approvals, enforcement notices, and whether a road is adopted.

It does not routinely cover what is proposed on the land next door, down the street, or on the field behind. That is the gap most buyers do not know exists until after completion.

What to check yourself

A weekend of checking is cheap compared with finding out afterwards.

• Applications within a few hundred metres in the last two years, and anything currently undecided
• Any outline permission nearby, it may look like an empty field now and be 200 homes in three years
• The council’s local plan site allocations, which name the land earmarked for future development
• Whether the property is in a conservation area or the building is listed, both of which restrict what you can do
• Any live enforcement action on neighbouring sites

Reading what you find

An undecided application near a property is not automatically a problem, and a refused one can come back amended. What matters is the scale, how close it is, and whether it fits the pattern of what the council has already approved locally.

Approval rates are useful context. If a council approves nine in ten applications of that type, treat a pending one as likely to happen.

Timing

Do this before you exchange. After exchange you are committed, and after completion your only options are to object to future applications like any other neighbour.