To check for binding brakes is it just a case of jacking up the wheels and then spinning the wheels by hand making sure there's no friction?
Yes, first making sure that the handbrake is off and in neutral
Really though, if it was a binding brake you would only need to feel the centre of each wheel after a journey in the car to know if one of them was indeed binding. The binding wheel would be the one that you had just left a layer of skin on!!