Selling Land in Windsor and Maidenhead

• Plots and yards inside Maidenhead, Windsor, Ascot and the inset villages.
• Small gaps in the built frontage of washed over villages.
• Yards, stables and commercial sites with lawful buildings, including in the Green Belt.
• Fields enclosed by roads, railways and existing homes on the edge of Maidenhead.
• Land within a reasonable walk of Maidenhead and the other stations with frequent trains.
• Open land near Ascot and Sunningdale that could provide SANG.

Land deep in the open Green Belt or on the Thames floodplain faces a higher bar, and our review will say that plainly. Our what we buy page shows the full range of land we take on.

• An outright sale. You sell the land as it stands today, privately or at auction. The price is what a buyer will pay for it without planning permission, and the buyer takes on everything that follows.
• A conditional contract. You agree a sale now, but it only completes if planning permission is granted. Until then you keep the land, and the agreement sets out who applies for permission and who pays.
• An option agreement, the route we use. We agree your price at the start, in writing, set above what your land is worth today. We then pay for and run all of the planning work, at our own cost and risk. If permission is granted, we complete the purchase and you receive the agreed price on completion. If it is not, you keep your land and owe nothing.

For land that needs planning permission before it is worth more, an option means you know your price before any work starts and never spend a penny on planning. The ways to sell land for development, compared sets out each route in full.

Below 75%, national policy treats housing need as evidenced, and policy S5 opens a route to approval on land outside a settlement that is well related to it. Across most of the Royal Borough that route is closed before it starts, because S5 does not apply in the Green Belt and the countryside here is almost all Green Belt. The result matters in three other ways instead:

1. Inside the towns and inset villages. Maidenhead, Windsor and Ascot, and the nine larger villages the plan insets from the Green Belt, Broomhall, Cookham, Cookham Rise, Datchet, Eton, Eton Wick, Old Windsor, Sunningdale and Wraysbury, fall under policy S4. Homes there should be approved unless the harm substantially outweighs the benefits, and the shortage of homes weighs heavily in that balance.
2. In the washed over villages. The plan lists sixteen smaller villages, among them Bray, Bisham, Holyport and Hurley, as washed over by the Green Belt. Limited infilling within a village remains one of the exceptions in Green Belt policy, which can suit a single plot or a small gap in a built frontage.
3. On grey belt. Where a piece of Green Belt does little for the purposes the Green Belt serves, it may count as grey belt, and evidenced unmet need is one of the conditions for building on it. Our grey belt explainer covers the Golden Rules that follow.

One caution. The Housing Delivery Test is re-run every year, and a borough at 74% can move back over the line after a single strong year of completions, particularly if the large Maidenhead allocations start to deliver. The five-year supply is the steadier footing. In January 2026 the council told its planning committee that its current position is 4.04 years, measured against a requirement that includes a 5% buffer; the Lawnfield House appeal decision of December 2025 records the same figure as of July 2025. A supply short of five years is evidence of unmet need in its own right, whatever the delivery result. A case that leans on the delivery result alone is less secure here than in a council far below the line.

That shortfall gives a grey belt site, or a plot inside an inset village, its firmest footing if you put it forward for homes today.

• The river. The plan names Wraysbury, Old Windsor, Cookham and Windsor as the places at highest risk from the Thames. The Jubilee River, an 11.6 kilometre relief channel from Maidenhead to Eton, reduces how often and how badly properties in the borough flood, but riverside land can still sit in the higher flood zones. Our flood risk guide explains the sequential test.
• The heaths. The Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area reaches the south of the borough, covering Sunninghill, Sunningdale, Cheapside and most of Ascot. Policy NR4 allows no net increase in homes within 400 metres of it. Between 400 metres and 5 kilometres, new homes must provide or pay towards Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace, known as SANG, at a minimum of eight hectares per 1,000 new residents, plus access management. Allen's Field is the council's strategic SANG. Open land that could serve as SANG can be useful to a nearby scheme in its own right.
• Affordable housing. Policy HO3 asks for 40% affordable homes on greenfield sites of up to 500 homes and 30% on all other sites, applying to schemes of 10 or more homes. In designated rural areas it asks for 40% even on schemes of five to nine.

Each of these adds cost and care rather than ruling land out. The affordable housing share in particular comes off what a scheme can support, which is why we allow for it from the start. We carry the cost of the surveys and the design work from the first review to the decision.

Each year brings a fresh Housing Delivery Test. The most recent, the Housing Delivery Test 2025, was issued on 17 August 2026 and measured April 2022 to March 2025. The next edition swaps the oldest year for 2025/26, so it will begin to show whether the big Maidenhead allocations are becoming finished homes. We do not guess the result, but we can say what a move either way would do.

• If the borough rises above 75%. The automatic finding of unmet need would fall away, but the supply shortfall described earlier would still evidence it. Both measures would need to recover before a grey belt case lost that support.
• The next supply position. National policy asks the council to update its five-year supply every year, and its committee reports cite the requirement to do so. A new position at or above five years would remove the second footing; one further below it would strengthen it. Which of those the council publishes is not for us to predict.
• If it stays below. The position described earlier on this page holds, and each further release below the line adds weight to the argument that the adopted plan is not delivering at the rate it expected.

The other calendar belongs to the council. With the scoping consultation and call for sites closed, it has not yet published when it will report on the land submitted or when a first draft will appear, and we would rather say so than invent dates. That draft, with the Green Belt evidence behind it, is when owners will first see whether their land is in the frame for release.

In practice this points to two tracks run side by side. Land inside the towns and inset villages, or with a genuine grey belt case, can go forward as an application while the figures support it. Land that needs the Green Belt boundary redrawn belongs in the new plan, and its evidence is better started well ahead of the draft. Our agreements cover both routes.