Selling Land in Chesterfield

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edge of Staveley, Brimington or the Eastern Villages, outside the Green Belt.
• Plots, gardens and backland inside the built-up area of Chesterfield and Staveley.
• Green Belt land on the north and west edges that is enclosed by roads or housing and may qualify as grey belt.
• Former works, yards, depots and pit land, including sites near the Rother valley and the Chesterfield Canal.
• Land within walking distance of shops, schools and bus routes, which the plan's locational policy favours.
• Larger holdings that could be put forward for the 2025 to 2044 plan.

Where we take a site on, we commission and pay for the surveys, drawings and planning work, whether the route is an application now or the new plan. Our option agreement fixes the price at the start, above what the land is worth today, and you carry on using the land until completion. If permission is not secured, you keep the land and owe nothing. The how it works page walks through each stage.

• 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 supply statement of August 2026 covers the five years from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031. It explains that because the plan was adopted in July 2020 and its policies are now more than five years old, national policy now tests the borough's supply against the government's standard method figure for local housing need, not against the plan's 240 a year. The workings are set out in full:

Of the 1,795 homes counted, 1,050 are the remaining plots on sites already being built. Small sites with permission add 294, outline permission for major schemes 175, plan allocations without permission 140 and communal accommodation 136. The brownfield register contributes none. In other words, well over half the supply is already under construction, and very little is waiting in reserve.

The Council Says the Method, Not the Building Rate, Is the Cause

The previous statement, at 1 April 2025, found 3.12 years against a need of 497 homes a year, so the shortfall is not new. When the latest figure went to the planning committee on 27 July 2026, the officers' covering report was direct: the only reason the position had changed was the new national method, which brought a significant increase in the target. Members were asked simply to note it. The borough completed 266 net new homes in 2025/26, comfortably above the plan's 240 but a little over half of the 494 the formula now asks for. Unless the pipeline of deliverable sites grows sharply, or a new plan sets a different requirement, the gap will not close on its own.

For an owner selling land in Chesterfield, that is a gap of 799 homes which the sites already in hand do not cover, and it is the reason land on the edge of the town deserves a fresh look now.

The plan's growth leans on a handful of large sites, including the former Staveley Works. The supply statement shows how slowly some of them are moving, and why the council has so little in reserve:

• Staveley Works, on the Staveley and Rother Valley Corridor. Identified for about 1,499 homes, but the statement expects delivery from 2032 onwards and ties it to the Chesterfield Staveley Regeneration Route, so it counts nothing in the five years. The plan itself had warned that a proposed HS2 depot could push most of the housing beyond 2035.
• Chesterfield Waterside, off Brimington Road. A large mixed-use scheme where 177 homes have been built under an earlier permission. The statement counts none of the remainder in the five years.
• Land south of Dunston Road. Outline permission for up to 500 homes, with reserved matters approved in June 2026. The statement counts 175 of them by 2031.
• Land south of Worksop Road, Mastin Moor. The first phase is being built and a second phase was given conditional approval in July 2026. The statement counts 105 homes.

For a landowner, the lesson is that the council's larger sites are real but slow, and that the shortfall is partly a matter of timing: land exists in the plan, but it is not ready to deliver in the next five years. A well prepared site that can start within the five years addresses exactly that gap. Previously developed land also scores well here, as policy CLP2 gives it priority after the plan's strategy itself, and our page on brownfield and yards covers the old works, depots and hardstanding we look at.