North West
Land in Cumberland
Figures for the Cumberland council area (3,036 km²) from the open data behind our tools: registered land by size, planning constraints, farmland quality, the electricity network, brownfield sites, and land that may not be registered at all.
29,248
registered land outlines of an acre or more, 8,089 of them 20 acres or more.
Search them in the site finder →68
brownfield register sites, 125 hectares in all, with room for at least 1,156 homes by the council's estimate.
See them on the map →3,763
plots that may not be registered with HM Land Registry, on our sister site.
Unregistered land in Cumberland →2,195
outlines that pass the site finder’s solar farm starting filters: 20 acres or more, near a substation, outside the main constraints and the best farmland.
Show them →Housing and the local plan
No Housing Delivery Test 2025 result is published for this council as a whole.
Its adopted local plan is the Cumberland Consolidated Planning Policy Framework, adopted April 2023.
From MHCLG’s Housing Delivery Test and the Planning Data platform’s local plan records, which some councils haven’t kept up to date. Whether the tilted balance applies to a scheme also depends on the council’s five-year land supply and the site itself: get planning advice.
Planning constraints
None of Cumberland’s larger outlines are mostly in Green Belt. 5,162 (18%) are partly in flood zone 3, the highest risk.
2,782 (10%) of them are in a nutrient neutrality catchment (River Derwent & Bassenthwaite Lake SAC; River Eden SAC), where new homes and overnight stays must offset the nutrient pollution they would add, usually by buying credits.
From the government’s Planning Data platform. Check any site with Planning check.
Farmland quality
3% of the graded farmland outlines of an acre or more are grade 1 or 2, the best and most versatile land.
- Grade 2767
- Grade 317,811
- Grade 45,662
- Grade 52,330
- Non-agricultural686
- Urban1,829
Natural England’s provisional grades at the centre of each outline. A broad-scale map, so a field survey is needed for any one site.
Electricity network
1,341 outlines of an acre or more are within 1 km of a primary or grid substation. The network operator’s published figures show no spare demand capacity at its substations here.
The best 2 km square for a data centre scores 90 out of 100, and 41 squares score 70 or more. Data centre site search →
Nearby council areas
Counts are of HM Land Registry INSPIRE title outlines (one title can have several outlines, and an outline isn’t always one field), counted under the council HM Land Registry files them with. Substations are from OpenStreetMap. None of this says whether land is for sale or could get planning permission. Sources: HM Land Registry; MHCLG Planning Data; Provisional Agricultural Land Classification © Natural England, Open Government Licence; the councils’ brownfield land registers; network operator open data; © OpenStreetMap contributors.