DPA Check is a free tool that tells you, in seconds, whether a property is likely to be in a Designated Protected Area — the rural areas where grant-funded Shared Ownership leases can cap staircasing and add resale conditions.
Whether a Shared Ownership home sits in a DPA can change what an owner is allowed to do — yet the answer is buried in a 2009 statutory instrument that lists thousands of parishes, plus around 750 separate Homes England boundary maps for parishes that are only partly designated. Checking it normally means cross-referencing legislation and PDFs by hand.
We built DPA Check to make that a single search. Type an address, postcode or coordinate — or drop a pin — and get an indicative answer with the reasoning and the official sources shown, so you can see exactly how the result was reached.
Every verdict is matched against the legal definitions in the 2009 Order, and we link the primary sources on each result. We’re deliberately clear about confidence: where only part of a parish is designated (“by maps”), we link the official Homes England map rather than guess. It is indicative guidance, not legal advice — always confirm against the official map and take professional advice before relying on a result. The How it works page explains the method and data sources in full.
I’m Paul. For nearly six years I was involved in the grant and Shared Ownership side of a housing provider, including helping work out which lease clauses applied, and when. I’m not a lawyer or a planner, but I was close enough to the day-to-day to get a lot of exposure to how Designated Protected Areas, staircasing caps and resale conditions actually play out.
The thing that always struck me is that the information needed to answer a simple question — “is this home in a DPA?” — is already public. It’s just scattered across a dense 2009 statutory instrument listing thousands of parishes and hundreds of separate Homes England boundary maps, so getting to an answer means hours of cross-referencing. There didn’t seem to be a single product that just told you. So I built one.
DPA Check is meant to turn a determination that used to take a morning into a single search — and to help everyone who runs into it: the housing associations issuing the leases, the solicitors acting on them, and the buyers and owners trying to understand their own home. The information was always there; this just makes it accessible.
It’s built and run by Tally Digital and it’s completely free. I’d genuinely value your feedback — if you’ve spotted an error, found something unclear, or have a feature in mind, get in touch at [email protected] or use the form below.
This is a free service, and your feedback genuinely helps us improve it — whether it’s an error you’ve spotted, something that was unclear, or anything else you’d like to tell us. Every message is read by a real person and is hugely appreciated.