Coastal land: eight things to check before you buy a plot

Velora reviews roughly forty-five sites a year and buys five. The eight checks below are, in order, where the other forty fall down. None of them requires a professional to run a first pass.

• Consent history. A refusal on the site within the last ten years is the single strongest predictor of another refusal. Ask for the full history, not the current position.
• Cliff and dune stability. Commission a specific assessment. A general survey will not tell you what the ground does in fifty years, and lenders increasingly ask.
• Access rights in writing. A track used for forty years is not the same as a right to use it, and it is not the same as a right to bring plant along it.
• Drainage. If there is no mains connection, establish where a treatment plant can discharge before you agree a price. Some plots have no lawful answer.
• Water and power. A supply four hundred metres away can cost more to bring in than the plot costs to buy.
• Designations. Heritage coast, conservation area, protected habitat and scheduled monument all behave differently, and two of them are effectively absolute.
• Ecology season. Surveys for protected species can only be carried out in certain months. Buying in October can mean waiting until May to know anything.
• What the neighbours already have. On a shared track or a small headland, the consents already granted set the precedent you will be measured against.

The one that catches people

Ecology season. A plot bought in autumn with the intention of applying in spring routinely loses a full year, because the bat and breeding-bird surveys required to support the application cannot be started until the season opens. Build that year into the price you offer, or into the year you expect to start.

We are glad to look over a plot informally for anyone considering one on this coast, whether or not we are involved in the purchase. It costs us an hour and occasionally saves someone a great deal more than that.