Nearly everything you need to research a property is published by government under an open licence. This is the working list, what each one covers, and where each one stops.
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The free official data sources every UK buyer can use
Nearly everything you need to research a property is published by government under an open licence. This is the working list, what each one covers, and where each one stops.
- 2 min read
- Updated 21 September 2026
Part 1 of 4
The open datasets, and their coverage
| Source | What it gives you | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| HM Land Registry Price Paid Data | Recorded residential sale prices since 1995 | England and Wales |
| HM Land Registry title register / plan | Ownership, tenure, covenants, general boundary | England and Wales (paid: £7 download) |
| INSPIRE index polygons | Indicative extent of registered freehold property | England and Wales (free, GIS required) |
| GOV.UK energy certificate register | EPC band, floor area, recommendations | England and Wales (Scotland has its own register) |
| Valuation Office Agency | Council tax band | England and Wales |
| Environment Agency long-term flood risk | High / Medium / Low / Very low per source of flooding | England (NRW, SEPA and NI equivalents elsewhere) |
| data.police.uk | Street-level recorded crime and outcomes | England, Wales and Northern Ireland; not Police Scotland |
| planning.data.gov.uk and council registers | Applications, constraints, designations | England primarily; councils vary |
| UK House Price Index | Official index of price change by area and type | UK |
Most of these are released under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which permits commercial and non-commercial reuse with attribution. That is why this site can show them to you for nothing.
The coverage column is the part people skip and then get wrong. A UK-wide claim built on an England-only dataset is a common and avoidable error.
Part 2 of 4
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