What a GainScout check looks at

Every check asks 21 counted official sources, then adds 10 context layers on top: 7 habitat, land-use and planning-boundary layers, plus the three steps of the built-up ground detection. Nothing is invented: a finding only appears when an official source says so, and each one carries its source and date.

Also counted in every check

Context layers on every check

7 habitat, land-use and planning-boundary layers add context without counting toward the check total, so a slow layer can never make a finished check look incomplete:

• Priority habitat
• Habitat networks
• Stewardship agreements
• Nutrient neutrality
• Nitrate vulnerable zone
• Open access land
• Buyer catchment

The other three are the steps of the built-up ground detection: ONS built-up areas, the address at the pin, and Natural England's Living England habitat map, combined so that genuine open land is never wrongly flagged as developed.

Known gaps, stated plainly

• Countryside and Environmental Stewardship agreements are checked from Natural England's published data, but there is no public map of SFI or Landscape Recovery agreements. So a clear result on existing agreements is never definitive: if the land is in a scheme, read the agreement, because work a scheme already pays for usually can't be sold again as gain.
• The national ALC maps do not split grade 3 into 3a and 3b.
• No national dataset answers whether a public footpath crosses a particular point, so rights of way are not checked.

Run a check