If you are not sure what a "red line" boundary is, there is a detailed guide here.

To make things simple, our system will help you by automatically having "Select OS Features" on. This means that we look up existing data from the Ordinance Survey. You need to turn this feature off by clicking on ‘draw’

STEP ONE: Click on the "Draw" button at the top of the page

STEP TWO: Click on the map to start drawing. You just have to move your mouse cursor and click to draw corners. You don't need to draw it perfectly - you can edit the drawing afterwards!

STEP THREE: Click on the blue dot (where you first clicked) to complete the drawing.

When you draw a shape, if you go into Edit mode, a series of white dots and grey dots. These allow you to edit the polygon easily:

Hint: sometimes, the white dots are hard to see. You can make it easy to find the dots by unticking "show details

Sometimes, when trying to draw a complicated shape, you might accidentally create a "self intersecting polygon" and get a warning that looks like this

If you have seen this error, don't worry! It's easy to fix if you follow the steps below.

STEP ONE: Click on the map to draw a very rough outline. At this stage, you don't need to be accurate at all - instead focus on keeping it simple. A simple shape which roughly aligns with what you're trying to draw will work fine!

STEP TWO: When you've done that, simply press the "Edit" button at the top of the screen.

STEP THREE: With edit mode on, click and drag the white dots into the right position. Click on the grey dots to turn them into white dots. (If you want to create a straight line, just click on the white dot and it will be deleted).

STEP FOUR: When you have aligned the whole area, just press the "Edit button" again, and you're done!

If you have a pre-existing site plan, adding multiple site plans as layers to the map is simple. These can be used to help you trace pre-existing site plans.

Step One: On the right-hand side of the map, you will see Advanced Tools. Click Upload Plans, then click and drag your site plan into the top left-hand box. You will see the file name appear on the right, click on it to preview and make sure that it has been uploaded properly. Finally press Save files.

Step Two: Click on Edit/Adjust Plans. You can now drag your site plan to the right area.

Step Three: While Edit/Adjust Plans mode is on, you can resize the site plan or change the rotation by clicking and dragging the black nodes.

Step Four: You can delete the site plan by pressing the delete icon.

Step Five: You can make the site plan more or less transparent by using the Opacity tool in the Advanced tools section. You can hide or unhide the site plan at any time by pressing the eye icon in the

If you upload a pdf, you will need to say what page your site plan is on. When you select the pdf an option will appear at the bottom of the page. Make sure you select the right page and then press 'Add Page' and then 'Save Files'.

If you upload a site plan, you can use the measurement tool to accurately draw a line anywhere on the map which can then be used as a simple point of reference (e.g. a wall). This will ensure your diagram will always be to the right scale.

It is not yet possible to "draw over" habitats with the Biodiversity Net Gain tool. But there is a solution - if you have a habitat parcel that is completely surrounded by another (such as a pond in the middle of a vegetated garden or a green roof surrounded by sealed surface) you will need to draw half of the surrounding parcel, then the middle parcel, then the remainder of the surrounding parcel (i.e. you end up with three different parcels).

Where detailed plans are not available, you should use a default 70:30 ratio of ‘urban – developed land; sealed surface’ to ‘urban – vegetated garden’ when assessing habitats within areas outlined for housing.

This ratio:

If the green roof is in the middle of a roof, you will need to draw the green roof in the same way as habitats that are in the middle of other habitats.

This sometimes happens if you click in an area that is far away from the pin that you dropped before. Don't worry! That's just our system realising you want to draw a map there and downloading the relevant data - just click again in the same area and you should find that it works perfectly!

This sometimes happens when there is a problem with the internet. Please check your internet connection and refresh the page.

If you are not sure

If you are still struggling, you can book a session to get support with the mapping software here