Selling Land in Fenland

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edges of Wisbech, March, Chatteris or Whittlesey, particularly on the higher ground.
• Land beside Doddington, Wimblington, Manea or Wisbech St Mary that could form a small village extension.
• Plots, gardens and yards inside the towns and villages.
• Former farmyards, packhouses and commercial sites next to a settlement.
• Larger holdings that could be put forward for Fenland 50.

Our page on farmland explains how we look at agricultural land. The price is settled when the option is signed, set higher than the land's value as farmland, and the planning is ours to fund and to risk. Farming carries on as normal until completion, and should permission not come, the land stays yours with nothing to repay.

• 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.

The Fenland Local Plan was adopted on 8 May 2014 and runs to 2031. Policy LP4 plans for 11,000 homes from 2011 to 2031 and shares them out as follows:

Policy LP3 sets out the settlement order that decides what each place can take. March and Wisbech are the primary market towns and Chatteris and Whittlesey the other two. Wimblington, Doddington, Manea and Wisbech St Mary are growth villages, where the plan accepts development inside the built-up area or as small village extensions. Coates, Elm, Friday Bridge, Leverington and Parson Drove are limited growth villages. Below them, small villages take development of a very limited nature, and the smallest places only single homes filling a gap in an otherwise built-up frontage.

Because the plan is more than five years old, its 11,000 figure no longer sets the yardstick for housing supply. The government's standard method does, as the next section shows.

For anyone selling land in Fenland, policy LP3 still matters even so: whether a field sits beside a primary market town, a growth village or a small village sets the scale of scheme the plan has in mind for it.

The June 2022 assessment warns that much of Fenland lies below the arterial drainage channels around it, leaving significant residual risk if defences were breached or overtopped. New homes outside Flood Zone 1 generally have to pass the sequential test, which asks whether reasonably available land at lower risk could take the homes instead.

How wide that search runs makes all the difference in the Fens. The council's guidance note on flood risk, issued in June 2015 to go with policy LP14, says that unless a proposal has strategic implications, such as a school catchment, it will consider flood risk in the context of the settlement where the site lies. A field in Flood Zone 3 on the edge of Manea is therefore compared with other land around Manea, not with the whole district. Where the exception test also applies, both of its parts must be met, the first being wider benefits to the community that outweigh the flood risk.

• Which flood zone each part of the field is in, and whether the homes can sit on the higher part.
• Which settlement the site relates to, and what lower risk land around that settlement is realistically available.
• The internal drainage board for the area and how surface water would reach its system.
• For land near Wisbech, the tidal Nene as well as the fen drainage.

Our guide to flood risk and development land explains both tests in more depth.

On 15 December 2025 the full council withdrew its previous draft plan, which ran from 2019 to 2040, citing changes to the national planning system. It published a notice to commence Fenland 50 in January 2026, reissued in March, to guide growth up to 2050 under the new 30-month process. The council's published timetable sets out what comes next:

The call for sites ran from 5 March to 31 May 2026 and has closed, and the council says there may be further chances to submit sites at later stages, which it will advertise on its Fenland 50 pages. Its Gateway 1 summary lists flood risk, drainage and water resources among the evidence to be updated. The initial proposals in early 2027 are likely to give landowners their first sight of the direction the council favours.

For an owner of land around Wisbech, March, Chatteris or Whittlesey that was not put forward by 31 May 2026, those later stages are the next opening, and a site with its own flood and drainage evidence will be easier to weigh against the council's updated studies.

A June 2025 Supply Figure, and Reorganisation on Hold

National policy asks for the supply to be updated each year, yet the council's latest monitoring report, published in February 2026, still relies on the June 2025 figure, and no newer statement has appeared. Delivery is tested yearly too, and the Housing Delivery Test 2025 arrived on 17 August 2026. At 117%, Fenland is clear of every sanction. The first, an action plan, arrives only below 95%; a buffer of 20% on the supply sums follows below 85%; and below 75% the council would be treated as having unmet need for policy S5.

Reorganisation is on hold here too. The national review announced on 7 September 2026 paused the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough proposals, and elections in May 2027 will use the current council areas. For now, Fenland District Council remains the body preparing Fenland 50.

Town Plots Now, Other Land Ready for the Early 2027 Proposals

• Land that missed the call for sites is best prepared now, with flood and access evidence ready for the initial proposals in early 2027.
• Plots in the towns, growth village edges and previously developed sites can be looked at now, without waiting for the new plan.
• Larger holdings have the most to gain from a well evidenced case put to the council before the preferred strategy is fixed.