Before anyone buys a field or draws a scheme, somebody checks what is on the land. In the trade that is a desk study: open every register in turn, note what applies, write it up.
Every map on Plota now has a Check a spot button. Press it, drop a pin anywhere in England, Wales or Scotland, and we read up to 43 registers (from 94 published datasets) at that point and tell you what is there. Flood zones, listed buildings, conservation areas, scheduled monuments, green belt, national parks and landscapes, SSSIs, ancient woodland, Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders, farmland grades, rights of way and the rest.
What the card shows
The card opens with a count: 4 of 36 constraints apply here. A register that could not be read is counted on its own and never folded into that total, because checked and clear has to mean checked.
The ones that matter most come first. A footpath crossing the site outranks a habitat network: obstructing a right of way without a diversion order is an offence, and the order has to be confirmed before work can start.
Under them are the registers that were read and came back clear. Knowing a site is outside the green belt and outside flood zones 2 and 3 is often the whole point of the exercise.
The emailed report
Press Email me report and the lot arrives in your inbox: the place, the coordinates, each finding and what it asks of a proposal, everything that was checked and clear, and a link that puts the pin back where you left it.
Shown on every application page
Applications get the same check without a pin. Every page with a location now carries a Site constraints section: the chips across the top, then a row for each one carrying the fact you would otherwise go and look up. Which listed building, and its list entry number. Which flood zone, and what it asks for. Whether the farmland is the best and most versatile land that policy protects. Where a council records something we cannot see in open data, an Article 4 direction it has never published as a boundary, the row says so and sends you to the council.
Updated 6 October 2026
The card and the emailed report now read the registers added to the map in October. A pin in England is checked against 43 constraints, up from 36.
- Coal mining: whether the spot is in the development high risk area or the coalfield, and any recorded mine shaft or adit within 50 m, with its distance and the Mining Remediation Authority's reference.
- Radon: the class of the 1 km square, and that it is indicative for the square.
- Future flood zones: whether the spot is inside the Environment Agency's flood zones grown for climate change, or in an area the Agency has not mapped yet.
- Flood defences: any defence within 50 m, with what it is and the flood it was designed for. A defence lowers the chance of flooding without removing it, and the report says so.
- National infrastructure: projects on the Planning Inspectorate's register at or near the spot, with their stage. A project still at pre-application is rated low.
- Single protected trees within 15 m, by distance.
- Listed buildings: whether the pin is inside a listed building's outline, where its council has published one, or only near it.
- Protected views in London: whether the spot is in a landmark viewing corridor or only in its wider setting.
- Public transport access in London: TfL's 2023 level for the 100 m square, as context.
A green belt finding now adds that some green belt can count as grey belt, which the council decides, and links the government guidance. The report credits each new source: the Mining Remediation Authority, the Planning Inspectorate, the British Geological Survey and UK Health Security Agency, and Transport for London.
Surface water flooding is on the map for England and Wales but is not in the check or the report. It is drawn as an image, which has no outlines for a pin to be tested against.