South East
Land in Reading
Figures for the Reading council area (40 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.
1,019
registered land outlines of an acre or more, 64 of them 20 acres or more.
Search them in the site finder →165
brownfield register sites, 143 hectares in all, with room for at least 12,862 homes by the council's estimate.
See them on the map →134
plots that may not be registered with HM Land Registry, on our sister site.
Unregistered land in Reading →38
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, Reading built 136% of the homes it needed over three years: no consequence.
The council delivered at least 95% of the homes it needed.
Its adopted local plan is the Reading Borough Local Plan 2019-2036, adopted November 2019 (7 years ago; plans are meant to be reviewed at least every five years).
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 Reading’s larger outlines are mostly in Green Belt. 162 (16%) are partly in flood zone 3, the highest risk.
From the government’s Planning Data platform. Check any site with Planning check.
Farmland quality
16% of the graded farmland outlines of an acre or more are grade 1 or 2, the best and most versatile land.
- Grade 234
- Grade 375
- Grade 4109
- Urban801
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
516 outlines of an acre or more are within 1 km of a primary or grid substation. The network operator publishes spare demand capacity at 9 substations here, about 190 MW in all.
The best 2 km square for a data centre scores 70 out of 100, and 5 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.