Brownfield Land
Housing on a previously developed site
Brownfield land is land with a previous built use, such as a former factory, warehouse or demolished building. The term is planning shorthand for previously developed land. Local planning authorities identify it through the planning system, and every UK nation does so under its own policy.
What This Means
This property stands on land with an industrial, commercial or other built use before the homes went up. A finished house or flat is no different to live in than any other. Sites redeveloped for housing in recent decades were cleaned up as a condition of the original planning permission. What matters is whether that clean-up was signed off, and whether the sign-off paperwork still exists. If a regulator later finds contamination and cannot trace the polluter, the cost can fall on the owner. This is one of the few things on this report that lenders and insurers price directly: a lender can hold the mortgage offer until the remediation sign-off is produced.
Practical Advice
- Ask your conveyancer for the environmental search result, which flags any recorded contamination at or near this property.
- Ask the seller for the remediation verification report and the council's notice discharging the contamination planning condition.
- If the search flags a risk, ask your conveyancer to price environmental indemnity insurance for the residual liability.
- Ask your conveyancer to send the remediation sign-off to your lender if the environmental search flags a risk.
- Commission a Phase 1 environmental survey before agreeing a price if the purchase is a bare plot, not a finished home.
Key Points
- Appearing on a brownfield land register is not evidence that this land was contaminated; the register records sites considered suitable for housing.
- On a bare plot, remediation costs are unknowable until a Phase 2 report quantifies them, and can run to six figures on a badly contaminated site.
Additional Information
In England, Wales and Scotland, contaminated land is regulated under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Northern Ireland's equivalent regime was passed in 1997 but has never been brought into force. The linked guidance is England's.