Why trust this?
Every figure has a named source, and every source is an official body apart from what is nearby and which way a home faces, which come from OpenStreetMap. Here is how, what we leave out on purpose, and every time someone said we were wrong.
How each check works
Queried live
Straight from the body that holds the data, at the moment you search. Land Registry, the Environment Agency, Police.uk.
Never scraped
No listings sites. No third-party aggregators re-packaging someone else's numbers.
A few from bulk files
Ofsted ratings, census figures and air quality are only published that way. Each one says so on its card.
What we deliberately don't show
No free official source gives these for every address. We say so rather than estimate.
The same checks by hand, timed
Every figure on a report comes from a website anyone can visit, so on 16 September 2026 we visited them: every check the report carried then, 44 of them, for one address, 55 Malden Hill Gardens, New Malden, KT3 4HX, each on the official site it comes from, with a clock running from the start of each check to the answer on screen. The person already knew every site and had the spreadsheet lookups scripted, so the minutes are a floor, not a buyer's afternoon. Where a figure existed on the website it matched the report, 14 of them to the decimal.
| Check | Official site | The catch | Steps | Min |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sold prices | HM Land Registry price paid data | The latest sale is found by scanning 19 entries | 3 | 0.7 |
| Valuation estimate | No official tool | Your own median over the rows; the search has no radius | 0 | 0 |
| Price index, five-year trend | UK House Price Index | The data-table tab; the five-year change is your own division | 8 | 1.1 |
| Council tax | VOA band lookup, then the council's charges table | Two sites and a five-column table | 7 | 1.3 |
| Stamp duty | gov.uk SDLT calculator | Eleven pages, once per buyer type | 11 | 2.8 |
| Rents | ONS Price Index of Private Rents | The borough's name and the local tool | 5 | 1.1 |
| EPC and the cost to C | EPC register | A long certificate page; four improvement steps to read | 3 | 0.8 |
| Extended or modified | Council planning register (Idox) | No result means no application, not no extension | 3 | 1.8 |
| Aspect | A map | A compass and a guess | 2 | 0.5 |
| Flood zone, surface water | Environment Agency flood map for planning | A robot check on the address route; the zone is a colour, with no marker on the postcode | 6 | 2.0 |
| Sewage discharges | Thames Water map; Environment Agency annual return | The map says now; the year's count is a national spreadsheet | 4 | 0.7 |
| Noise | DEFRA strategic noise map (Extrium viewer) | A colour band; the map stayed at country scale after the postcode | 5 | 1.2 |
| Crime | police.uk | The police neighbourhood, not a radius | 4 | 0.9 |
| Radon | UKHSA radon map | A colour; the address report is paid | 5 | 1.1 |
| Subsidence | BGS GeoIndex | No shrink-swell layer; a GIS download or a paid report | 4 | 1.4 |
| Air quality | DEFRA background maps | A 7.9 MB file of 254,911 rows, your grid square, the WHO guideline | 8 | 0.8 |
| Historic landfill | Environment Agency, via data.gov.uk | Three datasets with one name; GIS software | 6 | 1.2 |
| Coal mining | gov.uk, the Mining Remediation Authority | The old map is a 404; the report is from £27 plus VAT | 4 | 2.1 |
| Planning constraints, brownfield land, listed outlines | planning.data.gov.uk map | 7 of 57 layers to tick; the page warns its data may be incomplete | 8 | 0.9 |
| Environmental designations | Natural England MAGIC map | Would not open in the browser used; dozens of layers | – | 0.9 |
| Listed buildings | Historic England map search | A click per pin | 5 | 1.1 |
| Schools, state, private, universities | Get Information about Schools, then Ofsted | 235 establishments within a mile to filter; one Ofsted page per school | 6 + 2 a school | 1.5 |
| School places | The council's admissions guide, a 40-page PDF | Found by web search; your own distance per school | 6 a school | 1.3 |
| Nearby essentials | A map app | One search per category | 6 | 0.7 |
| Getting around | A map app's directions | Find the station, then route to it | 4 a station | 0.4 |
| Health services | NHS find a GP; three NHS Digital files | Three national files matched on the practice code | 3 + 3 files | 0.8 |
| Bus service | bustimes.org (Bus Open Data) | Counting departures from a timetable | 6 | 0.8 |
| Broadband, mobile | Ofcom checkers | Four coverage maps by colour, behind a reCAPTCHA | 9 | 3.4 |
| Household income | ONS income estimates for small areas | The MSOA code from a lookup; a 1.8 MB workbook | 4 | 0.7 |
| Deprivation and seven census cards | gov.uk indices of deprivation 2025; Nomis census profile | The LSOA code; a 33,756-row file; eight tables and six sums | 15 | 1.9 |
Totals: 28 websites, about 190 steps, 9 files needing a spreadsheet or GIS program, 12 answers that are colours on maps, 3 paid reports, 13 dead ends, 35.8 minutes. Five answers the websites cannot give at all: crimes within a mile, sales within 0.6 miles, buses an hour, patients per GP, and the chance of a school place. Three sites could not be opened in the browser used (the Environment Agency address check behind its robot check, Natural England's MAGIC map, the old Coal Authority map) and are described from their pages. And that is one house: the second is the same 28 websites again, with nothing to put side by side.
Every source we query
22 official bodies publish what the checks read. A body read by several checks is counted once, and a check that reads two bodies names both.
| Published by | Read for |
|---|---|
| HM Land Registry | Local Market, Area Prosperity, Valuation Estimate and Price Trend |
| HM Revenue & Customs | Costs & Affordability |
| Bank of England | Costs & Affordability |
| Office for National Statistics | Rental Analysis; Household Income; Occupation; Qualification; Age Profile; Housing Types & Tenure; Ethnicity, Religion & Origin; Since 2011 and Health, Relationships & Social Grade |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government | Energy Efficiency, Council Tax, Deprivation, Extended or Modified, Development Nearby and Planning Decisions |
| Environment Agency | Flood Risk, Surface Water Risk, Sewage Discharge and Historic Contamination |
| Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs | Noise and Air Quality |
| Police.uk | Crime & Safety |
| Department for Transport | Road Safety and Bus Service |
| British Geological Survey | Radon Gas and Subsidence Risk |
| Welsh Government | Council Tax |
| Scottish Government | Council Tax |
| Ofcom | Broadband and Mobile Signal |
| Natural England | Planning Constraints and Environmental Designations |
| Historic England | Planning Constraints and Listed Buildings |
| Ofsted | Schools Nearby |
| Department for Education | Schools Nearby, State Schools, Private Schools and Universities |
| Food Standards Agency | Nearby Essentials |
| Mining Remediation Authority | Mining Risk |
| Local councils | School Catchment Areas |
| National Rail | Getting Around |
| NHS England | Health Services |
Not an official body, and not counted above: OpenStreetMap, the open map its volunteers draw, read for Nearby Essentials, Aspect and Getting Around.