Sites to behold

The property you have set your heart on looks wonderful. But is it? Could it have been built on contaminated land, on a site full of radon gas or riddled with pollutants from old industries? Is it on a flood plain or built on clay soil vulnerable to subsidence and cracking?

As developers respond to government pressure to build more homes on brownfield sites, owners of new homes, in particular, are starting to ask searching questions about potential health and safety hazards before they buy. An estimated 50 per cent of new homes are built on used land, and this is set to rise to 60 per cent by 2008. In the South-East, where demand for homes is greatest, 40,000 properties a year are built on recycled land.

The chances are that such land was once industrial, heavily polluted and contaminated. According to the Landmark Information Group, which provides data on environmental risk to the commercial property industry, there are more than 400,000 sites nationwide that could have contaminated the ground, some of which have already been developed for housing. An estimated 200,000 sites have been used for storing hazardous substances or for processes that pollute and there are more than 24,000 landfill or waste sites in Britain.

But most of this information doesn't show up on standard local authority searches. Buyers risk being stuck with blighted, unsaleable properties on hazardous plots of land unless they carry out their own investigations before they buy. Thanks to a number of websites offering environmental reports for all postcodes and information on everything from radon risk to landslip, this has never been easier or cheaper.

www.yell.co.uk

Yell.com, the online arm of the Yellow Pages, offers a Homecheck report. Click on the link to www.homecheck.co.uk and input the postcode of your property for an overview of the history and potential hazards of the surrounding environment. The report includes flood risk, subsidence, radon gas risk, landslip, landfill sites, air quality, waste processing and pollution. Information comes from various bodies, including the Environment Agency, the Coal Authority and the British Geological Survey. A detailed site report for a specific property costs £23.50.

www.environment-agency.gov.uk

The official site of the Environment Agency, the government body responsible for the cleanliness of rivers and bathing waters, the control of pollution and the handling of waste. Click on Your Environment, then What's In Your Backyard, input your postcode and you get a map of your street and surrounding roads. You can zoom in and click for more information on everything from flood plains to large industrial sites in your neighbourhood. Click on Tell Me More in each section for a detailed technical explanation of how the agency measures the cleanliness of bathing waters or the pollutants in the air. There's also a list of every local authority in the country, along with information on what potential health hazards they include within their boundaries.

www.home-envirosearch.com

Operated by the Landmark Information Group, Home-envirosearch.com is a free online search for environmental nasties in your area, flagging up Yes or No to the existence of landfill sites, waste-processing sites, pollution, radioactivity, subsidence, radon gas, flooding, mine works and mobilephone transmitters. You can order a detailed report on the environment of a specific property for £39, which will take two to three days to prepare. The report covers the area's history and present environment within a 500m radius of your property. You can also cover yourself against potential costs of paying for the clear-up of contaminated land (see www.lawsoc.org.uk) and legal liability with the Envirosearch Residential Insurance Policy. This costs about £5 a year for cover of up to £350,000 for 10 years.

www.upmystreet.com

The site contains information on anything from schools to crime in your area and how well the council performs in recycling household waste and collecting rubbish compared with the national average. Full statistics on efficient rubbish collection and recycling are published by the Audit Commission ( www.audit-commission.gov.uk ).