North West
Land in Manchester
Figures for the Manchester council area (116 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.
3,394
registered land outlines of an acre or more, 137 of them 20 acres or more.
Search them in the site finder →621
brownfield register sites, 411 hectares in all, with room for at least 58,438 homes by the council's estimate.
See them on the map →574
plots that may not be registered with HM Land Registry, on our sister site.
Unregistered land in Manchester →87
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
In the government’s Housing Delivery Test 2025, Manchester built 75% of the homes it needed over three years: 20% buffer.
The council delivered under 85% of the homes it needed, so it must add a 20% buffer to its five-year housing land supply and publish an action plan.
Its adopted local plan is the Places for Everyone Joint Development Plan, adopted March 2024.
A new plan, the Manchester Local Plan, is at early consultation (Regulation 18).
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
Of the 3,394 outlines of an acre or more, 169 (5%) are mostly in Green Belt. 230 (7%) are partly in flood zone 3, the highest risk.
From the government’s Planning Data platform. Check any site with Planning check.
Farmland quality
0% of the graded farmland outlines of an acre or more are grade 1 or 2, the best and most versatile land.
- Grade 3134
- Grade 428
- Non-agricultural89
- Urban3,143
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
1,161 outlines of an acre or more are within 1 km of a primary or grid substation.
The best 2 km square for a data centre scores 100 out of 100, and 27 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.