Babelfish
Housing · A Babelfish investigation

Find Empty Land. Fix the Map.

Britain has a housing crisis and needs more homes.
The official national brownfield register is years out of date.
Far too often sites on the register are already developed.
Search a postcode to see what's near you, and help fix the record.

The problem

Councils must keep this data — but many don't

By law, every council has to list its brownfield land and review it each year. Many don't — so plots already built on stay listed, and real sites go missing.

Help correct it

Spot an entry that's wrong?

Open a site that's already built or long stalled, and email the council a ready-written note to fix the record.

Add a missing site

Know land that's missing?

Click the exact spot of real empty or derelict land that isn't listed, and suggest it to the council for the register.

Tip: click anywhere on the map to search that spot. If nothing's found, the radius widens automatically. England only; sites already developed (carrying an "end date") are excluded. Treat sites as leads to verify, not confirmed vacant.
Suitable — no permission yetPermission granted (recent)Still listed as available 3+ years after permissionReported suitable
Help fix the record. Open a site and hit Email the council if the entry's wrong or already built.
If you know of empty land that's missing, click the exact spot and Suggest it to the council.
Enter a postcode, or click anywhere on the map, to begin.
How to read this. A pink marker means the site is still listed as available three or more years after planning permission was granted — which could be a genuine stalled site, or simply out-of-date government data that was never updated after the homes were built. Treat it as a lead to check, not proof: open the satellite view before drawing conclusions. A blue marker ("reported suitable") is a site reported by the public as brownfield that isn't on the official register — shown only once three or more people have reported it. Reported dots carry the number of reports. Capacity and area figures are councils' own estimates and are self-reported. Sites a council has marked as developed are excluded, but registers vary in how recently they were updated, so open the satellite view (which shows the imagery's capture date) before relying on any single site. Data: Planning Data — Brownfield land (OGL). Postcodes: postcodes.io. Aerial imagery: Esri / Maxar.