Selling Land in Peterborough

• Fields of 2 acres or more against the edge of Glinton, Northborough, Eye Green, Thorney or the other villages.
• Land beside the city's edge, including next to Hampton, Great Haddon or Norwood, that could help with access or open space.
• Yards, depots and older commercial buildings inside the city.
• Large gardens and backland plots in the townships and villages.
• Land in Flood Zone 1, clear of the Nene floodplain.

For land that fits the shortfall route, we prepare and submit the application. Land that needs an allocation gets a different kind of preparation: the technical case the inspector and the next review will want to see. Either way, we meet the whole cost of the planning, and the option price, settled at the outset, sits above what the land is worth now. You carry on using the land until completion. A free land value review is the quickest way to see which route applies.

• 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 council's five-year land supply statement, published on 27 March 2026 for the five years from 1 April 2025, is plain: "the council cannot demonstrate a five year supply". Because the 2019 plan is more than five years old, it measures supply against local housing need from the standard method, not the plan's own figure:

The statement concludes that the presumption in favour of sustainable development, the "tilted balance", applies to housing applications. The allocations row is the telling one: on 31 March 2025 the 2019 plan still had 5,222 homes on allocations without permission, and none is counted as deliverable by 2030.

The position turned quickly. The council's statements showed 5.40 years in 2021 and 5.37 in 2022. At 1 April 2024 it first found 6.06 years on the old standard method of 936 homes a year, then 5.37 in a February 2025 update on the new method's 1,006. Building has not slowed: its housing monitoring report for 2025/26 records net completions, care homes included, of 765 in 2022/23 and 856 in 2023/24, then 1,262 and 1,249 in the two years since, above the need of 1,030. The gap is in timing, not pace: 8,258 homes had permission at 31 March 2025, but the statement expects only 4,323 of them to be built by 2030.

That gap between permissions and completions is why land well placed against a village or the city edge has the council's own shortfall to point to today, without waiting for the new plan.

The council has been preparing its replacement plan since a first consultation in July and August 2023. It ran two calls for sites, in 2023 and 2024, consulted on a draft plan from 11 April to 29 May 2025 and on alternative sites from 23 January to 5 March 2026. According to local democracy reporting in August 2026, the final draft provides for about 20,000 homes over 20 years, with around 76% directed to the city's urban area, and 196 hectares of new employment land. The largest sites reported were:

What Changed From the Draft

• The proposed 3,000 homes on land north of Castor and Ailsworth were dropped.
• Allocations of 48 homes at The Green Backyard and 42 homes south of Parker Road, Wittering, were removed.
• A proposed employment site at Fletton Junction was taken out.
• The council leader's administration asked officers to shift the focus onto the city centre rather than large developments in rural areas.

North of Castor and Ailsworth the final draft no longer offers an allocation, so the shortfall and the village routes set out below are where a review of land for sale there now begins.

2043 or 2044?

The council's Local Plan Review page says the new plan will guide growth to 2043, while the 2025 draft was titled Draft Local Plan 2024 to 2044, so the end date appears to have moved between drafts. The direction matters more than the year: growth is being steered into the city and a few large extensions.

Local reporting in August expected Cabinet the following week and consultation in September and October. The August decision was called in to the council's scrutiny committee, which considered it on 15 September 2026, and on 1 October 2026 Cabinet approved the proposed submission plan and its policies map for a six-week final consultation, noting minor changes made after the August 2026 framework was published. The council's own page, updated on 5 October 2026, gives the consultation as running from 9am on 2 October to 11.59pm on 12 November 2026, with submission to the Secretary of State by 31 December 2026.

The council's timetable runs on from there:

The Next Statement, From April 2026, and a Merger Decision on Hold

The 2025 statement appeared almost a year after its base date. The next, from 1 April 2026, will again use the standard method and will take in the 1,249 homes completed in 2025/26. We do not predict it, but if it is also below five years, the S5 route stays open. The delivery test is published yearly as well, the latest being the Housing Delivery Test 2025 of 17 August 2026. The test carries its own triggers at 95%, 85% and 75%: first an action plan, then a 20% buffer on the supply requirement, then unmet need taken as given without further evidence. At 100%, none is engaged today.

In July 2026, when the government put off its decision on the area until the autumn, the council said its preferred option, known as Option D, would protect the identity of a rapidly growing city. Since then, the government's announcement of 7 September 2026 has put the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough proposals on hold while ministers look again at the programme nationally, and elections in May 2027 go ahead on today's boundaries. The city council remains the planning authority and carries the plan forward.

Village and Edge Land Now, Plan Land at Examination

The window that matters most is the one before adoption in 2027. A shortfall carries most weight while the old plan is out of date; once a new plan with its own allocations is in force, the council can defend its choices far more easily. Well placed village and edge-of-city land is therefore worth reviewing now, and land that needs the plan is best prepared for examination. Those stages are explained step by step in our local plans guide.