Finding development land

The Development Finder searches land that is already recorded as available for development, so you can start from a real site rather than a blank canvas.

Opening it

Two ways in: 🔍 Find a site… at the top of the sidebar, then Find development land; or the 🔎 Find development land tile on your dashboard, which lets you browse before you create a design at all.

Where the sites come from

Every local planning authority in England has a statutory duty to publish a brownfield land register — land it considers appropriate for residential development. Airship searches those registers, published through planning.data.gov.uk under the Open Government Licence.

Each result shows what the register records: site area in hectares, the net dwelling capacity the authority estimates, ownership, planning permission status, and whether the authority considers it deliverable.

Filtering

Narrow by minimum and maximum area, minimum homes, permission status and ownership. Results are ordered by capacity, largest first.

Constraints at a glance

Each site is checked against flood zones, green belt and conservation areas, and flagged before you open it — so a site that was never going to work announces itself in the list.

Using a site

📐 Use this site puts its boundary on the canvas and moves the map to it. Airship uses the best boundary it can find, and tells you which you got:

• Mapped boundary — a real polygon published with the register entry.
• Registered title boundary — HM Land Registry’s index polygon, used only when its area agrees with the register’s stated hectares.
• Indicative boundary — a shape of the registered area at the registered point, for you to adjust.

The shortlist

Press ☆ on any result to save it. The Shortlist tab compares your saved sites side by side — area, homes, density, permission, local average value, an indicative GDV and a rough margin — with a note against each. Use takes one onto the canvas; the shortlist stays with your workspace.

What this cannot tell you

No free dataset says who owns a site or whether it is for sale. 👤 Who owns this? links to HM Land Registry, where a property summary is free and a title register — which usually names the owner — costs £7.