Three of the routes investors get most excited about — demolish-and-rebuild, upward extension, car park development — are, on the current law, either dead letters or do not exist at all. Meanwhile the two best rights in England are the ones nobody markets. A score is only worth something if it knows the difference. The tool below is the actual scoring engine, with the statutory basis for every point it awards and every point it refuses.
Every line above is derived, not asserted. The score is the sum of statutory routes that survive the constraints on that specific building — and the constraints are where almost all the value is decided.
What you can use today is the scoring engine below. Put a real building into it and it will tell you, with the statutory basis, which routes are open and which are closed. That part is finished and it works.
What does not exist yet is the database — the map of every property in a borough already scored. That is a data pipeline, not a web page, and it is the actual company. The good news is that the inputs are almost all free and public: the EPC register gives floor areas and building types, the rating list gives every commercial property, Land Registry polygons give plot boundaries and therefore site density, planning data gives applications and approvals, and councils must publish brownfield registers. Assembling those into a scored map is real engineering work with a real cost, and we would rather show you a working engine than a mocked-up subscription page for a database that has not been built.
This is the engine, not a demonstration of one. Enter a real property and it applies the current permitted development regime in England — the General Permitted Development Order as amended in March and May 2024 — and awards points only where a route genuinely survives. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no form in front of it.
These are what actually decide it. Tick anything that applies — each one closes routes rather than reducing them.
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These appear on nearly every sourcing pitch we have seen. On the current law each one is either a dead letter, badly misunderstood, or does not exist. A score that awards points for them is inflating itself.
There is no permitted development right in England allowing residential or commercial development on surface car parks, decked car parks or car park airspace. None. Car park sites need full planning permission, permission in principle or a plan allocation — which may well be obtainable, but is a two-year process, not a right.
Class ZA sounds transformative and almost never works. You cannot expand the footprint, so the only gain is two storeys inside an 18-metre cap on a building already under 1,000 square metres. Add: detached only, old office use only, built before 1990, vacant six months, no conservation areas, and thirteen prior approval matters including the method of demolition.
Genuine, and available on a much smaller residue of buildings than the headline suggests. The construction window of 1948 to 2018 excludes the entire Victorian, Edwardian and interwar stock — which is most of the town centres where airspace value actually exists. Conservation areas are excluded. Blocks need three storeys already. And the airspace title is frequently not the freeholder’s to sell.
It does not, and this one matters. Moving between any Class E uses — shop to office to gym to clinic — is not development at all, so there is nothing for an article 4 direction to remove. Article 4 only removes the rights that take a building out of Class E, such as Class MA. Restrictive planning conditions on the original consent are the real constraint, and they are invisible without pulling the decision notice.
This is the part that is engineering rather than opinion. Almost every input needed to score a building at scale is free and public — which is exactly why the product is viable, and also why the moat is the scoring logic rather than the data.
Every non-domestic EPC gives address, floor area and building type, lodged by an assessor who physically inspected. This is the single best free source for “8,000 sq ft office” at national scale.
The 2026 rating list covers around two million properties with descriptions, floor areas and rateable values. It is the closest thing to a national commercial property census, and it updates.
INSPIRE polygons give plot outlines free — which is what lets you compute site density and spot underbuilt plots. Ownership needs a title register at £7 each, so it is a targeted check, not a bulk one.
Conservation areas, listed buildings, article 4 directions, brownfield registers and more, as national datasets. Coverage is uneven by authority, and article 4 coverage is the weak point — which matters, because article 4 is the main thing that kills Class MA.
Every authority must publish one. Part 2 entries carry permission in principle already granted. This is a list of sites the council has said yes to in principle and most investors have never opened.
The signal Fraser Bond is best placed to read: what has been approved within 200 metres, on what grounds, and what was refused. Availability varies by authority and this is the part that needs real work rather than a download.
These are prices for work we can actually do today. There is no subscription tier, because the database it would give you access to has not been built — and selling access to it now would be exactly the sort of thing the rest of this page exists to warn you about.
The engine on this page is a filter, not an appraisal. It applies the permitted development regime to what you tell it. It cannot see an article 4 direction, a restrictive planning condition, a nutrient catchment, the structural condition of the building, the title, or whether the owner will sell — and those decide most outcomes. Scored against the General Permitted Development Order 2015 as amended by SI 2024/141 on 5 March 2024 and SI 2024/579 on 21 May 2024, in force as at August 2026. The weights are our own and reflect real-world usability rather than headline generosity, which is why Class ZA scores zero. A revised National Planning Policy Framework is expected shortly and its draft article 4 policy would make it easier for councils to remove these rights. Long-dated permitted development value should be priced with that in mind. We are not planning consultants or solicitors. A prior approval application, an appeal or a legal opinion on a title goes to the appropriate specialist, and we will name them rather than stretching.
One property, or the area you are working. We will check the things the engine cannot see — the article 4 register, the catchment, the planning history — and tell you honestly whether it is worth your time. If the answer is that the routes are closed, that is a useful answer and a free one.
Four questions. We come back with what we would actually score in your area, what we already know, and an honest view on whether the intelligence product is worth waiting for or whether you want a property found this quarter.
It changes entirely what is worth showing you.
Choose as many as apply.
Boroughs or districts, and the lot size you can actually transact.
We will be straight about what exists today and what does not. If you need a site this quarter, the database is not the answer and we will say so.
Check it over. Tapping the button opens WhatsApp with this ready — nothing has been sent yet.
Send this on WhatsAppEvery one of these has a free tool on it. None of them asks for your details before it gives you an answer.
Planning conditions, CIL, section 106 and biodiversity net gain — and the gates you only get one attempt at.
Pre-commencement gate checker with irreversibility flagsfrom £850 →What the law will cost you over a ten-year hold, before you commit to buying.
Ten-year capex forecaster with the yield impactfrom £450 →For businesses. Rent is barely 60% of what a lease costs. The rest is service charge, rates, energy and a dilapidations bill nobody provisioned for.
Whole-life cost of your lease, and the dilapidations exposurefrom £1,250 →Two, clearly, and they are not the ones that get marketed. Class MA — commercial to residential — is the primary route and it got materially better on 5 March 2024, when the 1,500 square metre floorspace cap and the three-month vacancy requirement were both removed. A fully let building of any size can now apply. It also survives in conservation areas, which no other major residential route does. The second is Class G, which allows up to two flats above a retained commercial use, has no floorspace limit, and works on article 2(3) land and on listed buildings — precisely where everything else is closed. Class G is the most under-used right in England and almost nothing in the sourcing market scores it. For agricultural buildings, Class Q is now genuinely good: ten dwellings, a thousand square metres, a hundred and fifty each since 21 May 2024, and it works in the Green Belt.
Because Class ZA is a dead letter and we would rather say so than pad a score. You cannot exceed the original footprint, so the entire gain is two storeys inside an eighteen-metre cap on a building that must already be under a thousand square metres and under eighteen metres. On top of that: detached only, former office use only, built before 1990, vacant for six months, excluded from every conservation area, and thirteen prior approval matters including the method of demolition, all inside a three-year completion clock rather than a commencement clock. The residual advantage over a full planning application is close to nothing, and the prior approval process is not materially lighter. If a sourcing platform is awarding points for demolition potential on the basis of Class ZA, ask them how many they have seen implemented.
Real, and available on a much smaller residue of buildings than the headline implies. The Part 20 upward extension classes require the building to have been constructed between 1 July 1948 and 5 March 2018, which excludes the entire Victorian, Edwardian and interwar stock — which is to say most of the town centres where airspace value actually exists. They are excluded on article 2(3) land, which includes every conservation area. Classes A and AA need three storeys already and detached form; the terraced class caps at eighteen metres and cannot exceed the neighbouring roof by more than three and a half metres, which usually reduces it to a single storey. Then the non-planning problems: the airspace is frequently not the freeholder’s to sell, and on a block of flats a disposal triggers the leaseholders’ right of first refusal under section 5 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987. Our engine awards it, but conditionally and at a fraction of Class MA.
Two, and both are invisible from the street. The first is an article 4 direction, which removes the right entirely, appears nowhere in the legislation, is only findable on the individual council’s register, and is concentrated in exactly the town centre and employment locations where the arithmetic otherwise works. The second is less well known and worse: regulation 77 of the Habitats Regulations 2017. In the nutrient neutrality catchments — something like seventy authorities across the Solent, Kent, Tees, Somerset Levels, the Wye and elsewhere — permitted development that could have a likely significant effect on a European site must not be begun until the council gives separate written approval, and that requires the same nutrient mitigation as a full application. Critically, a prior approval that has been granted, or that has been deemed granted because the council failed to determine it within 56 days, does not cure this. A Class MA consent in an affected catchment can be worth nothing at all until mitigation is secured.
No, and this is worth getting right because a lot of appraisals get it backwards. Moving between uses inside Class E — shop to office to gym to clinic to nursery to restaurant — is not development at all under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, because it is a change within a single use class. An article 4 direction operates only on the General Permitted Development Order, so there is simply nothing for it to remove. Article 4 can only take away the rights that move a building out of Class E, such as Class MA. What does restrict intra-Class-E movement is a planning condition on the original permission tying the unit to a specific use, which survived the 2020 reforms untouched and is very common on retail parks, business parks and mixed-use schemes. That condition is invisible unless you pull the decision notice, which is why we do.
No. There is no permitted development right in England allowing residential or commercial development on surface car parks, decked car parks or car park airspace, and we looked specifically. Car park sites are a full planning application, permission in principle, a local development order or a plan allocation. That does not mean they are not worth pursuing — large surface car parks in town centres are among the best development sites in the country — but it means the route is a two-year process on merit rather than a right, and any score that treats a car park as latent permitted development value is simply wrong. Our engine scores underbuilt land through the full planning route and says so explicitly.
Not yet, and we would rather lose the sale than imply otherwise. What exists and works is the scoring engine on this page — put a real building into it and it applies the current regime honestly. What does not exist is the scored map of every property in a borough. That is a data pipeline: EPC register for floor areas and building types, the rating list for the commercial universe, Land Registry polygons for plot boundaries and site density, planning datasets for constraints, brownfield registers for sites councils have already accepted. Almost all of it is free and public, which is why the product is viable and also why the moat is the scoring logic rather than the data. Building it properly is real engineering with a real cost. In the meantime we do this the human way, at £450 a site, which is what the pricing below reflects.
Yes, and it points the wrong way for permitted development value. A comprehensively redrafted National Planning Policy Framework went out to consultation in December 2025, closed in March 2026, and publication has been signalled for summer 2026 — so it may land within weeks. Most of the draft is helpful to development: a strengthened presumption in favour, national development management policies that would give inconsistent local policies very limited weight. But one draft policy proposes a more flexible approach to article 4 directions, expressly so that councils can remove permitted development rights more readily to protect the amenity or wellbeing of an area. The current framework restricts article 4 on commercial-to-residential change to cases of wholly unacceptable adverse impact. Loosening that would let far more authorities switch Class MA off across town centres. If you are underwriting permitted development value on a long horizon, that is the risk to price.
Anyone can look at an 8,000 square foot office and see a conversion. What decides whether it is worth anything is a list of things you cannot see from the street: whether an article 4 direction has quietly removed the right, whether the building sits in a nutrient catchment, whether the current use has run two years, and how deep the floorplate is. That is the work, and it is the part that would make a database worth paying for.
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