The rules changed. Does your land qualify now?

The principle of development is now a list of specific routes rather than a single balancing exercise. Inside a town or village the answer starts as yes. Outside one, you have to fit one of the listed routes, but there are more of them than before and they are alternatives rather than a hierarchy. In the Green Belt, land that does not strongly serve one of three specific purposes is now called grey belt and is much easier to develop.

Possibly, and by more routes than before. Filling a gap in a group of houses, redeveloping land that has been built on, reusing an existing building, and addressing an evidenced unmet housing need are all separate routes outside settlements. You only need one to fit. The most common winning argument is that the council cannot show a five year supply of housing land.

Land in the Green Belt, including previously developed land, that does not strongly contribute to any of three Green Belt purposes: checking the sprawl of a large built-up area, preventing neighbouring towns merging, and preserving the setting of a historic town. Protecting the open countryside in general is deliberately not one of the tests. Whether land strongly serves one of the three is a judgement, and councils and inspectors can legitimately disagree.

Around 800 metres, or around 10 minutes' walk where a hill, a main road or a river would discourage walking from further out. The station also has to be well connected, meaning at least 4 services an hour overall or 2 in one direction, and within one of the eighty busiest travel-to-work areas in England.

Because the same policy that opens the route also sets a floor. Near a well-connected station you have to achieve at least 35 homes per hectare, rising to 45 where the service is at least twice the minimum frequency. It is measured against the part of the site you actually build on, not the whole thing. Falling below it means a refusal in its own right, which catches schemes that thought the station was purely good news.

No, and nothing could. It applies the national rules to the answers you give and shows you which routes are open, which turn on judgement, and what is still unknown. It has not seen your local plan, your neighbourhood plan, the planning history of the site, or anything a site visit would show. It is not planning advice.

It is free and there is no sign-up. The policy sandbox needs nothing from you at all. If you want a planner to check a real site against the local plan, that needs an email address, but the automated assessment never will.