Selling Land in Derbyshire Dales

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edge of Ashbourne, Matlock, Wirksworth or Darley Dale, outside the park boundary.
• Land that sits well against Doveridge, Brailsford, Hulland Ward, Tansley or Middleton.
• Fields free of any landscape designation, as the Clifton appeal site was, where the question is character rather than a hard constraint.
• Former quarry land near a settlement, of the kind the 2017 plan allocated at Darley Dale, Matlock and Wirksworth.
• Plots inside a settlement boundary, under national policy S4.
• Larger holdings in the south of the district, where the council has pointed its longer term thinking.

Land inside the park, or beside the mills at Cromford, faces narrower prospects, and we will say so plainly. Farmers can read more on our farmland page.

• 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 Park Authority's own guidance is plain: if a property lies outside the park boundary, the application goes to the local council, and Derbyshire Dales is one of nine councils it lists around the park.

Where the council does decide, its 2017 plan ranks every settlement, and the draft policies of March 2026 still name the same market towns and local service centre:

• Market towns: Matlock, Ashbourne and Wirksworth.
• Local service centre: Darley Dale.
• Villages with some facilities: Brailsford, Clifton, Cromford, Darley Bridge, Doveridge, Hulland Ward, Matlock Bath, Middleton, Northwood, Rowsley, Sudbury and Tansley.
• Smaller villages: two further tiers, from Bonsall, Brassington and Kirk Ireton down to infill villages such as Hognaston, Shirley and Yeaveley.

Even outside the boundary, the park is never far from the argument. The March 2026 draft policies expect development on the edge of a settlement to enhance or restore landscape character, with particular regard to the setting and character of the National Park. Which side of the line a field falls on is the first thing we check.

Local reporting in April 2026 gave the government's housing figure for the district as 580 homes a year. The council proposed that the National Park take 158 of those, leaving the Dales with 415, with two fallbacks: 523 if the park took only 50, or the existing 284.

The council identified 28 sites for 2,133 homes, and the revised list it put out to consultation in August carries the same totals. The Wolds site has been removed. The spread is uneven:

Ashbourne takes well over half, and Matlock very little. A new village, potentially in the south of the district, was once set to take 70% of new housing but has been pushed back to a background option taking shape from 2035, which makes the next plan review as relevant as this one for owners in the south.

If you are thinking of selling land near Ashbourne, the draft plan already looks there first; elsewhere, and in the south above all, the better route may be an application while the shortfall lasts, or the review that follows this plan.

The Housing Delivery Test is published once a year; the Housing Delivery Test 2025 was released on 17 August 2026. Below 85% would add a 20% buffer to the land supply calculation, deepening the shortfall; below 75% unmet need would be taken as given. A result of 95% or more would end the action plan duty but would not repair the land supply.

The land supply is a separate matter. The council's planning policy pages carry its monitoring reports, Housing Delivery Test results and Local Development Scheme, but no current five-year supply statement, so the 1.36 years agreed at the Clifton appeal is the latest figure on the public record. The Hopton decision eight months earlier had already recorded a shortfall. A gap that wide is not closed by one good year, and the new plan's sites count only once they are allocated and ready to build.

Two Timetables, One Direction

The council's Local Development Scheme page still shows the scheme adopted on 7 December 2023, aiming for submission in June 2025 and adoption in March 2026. Reporting in July 2026 gives the current timetable: submission in December 2026, examination in 2027 and likely adoption in early 2028, though consultants warned in April it could slip to early 2029. Under either timetable the 2017 plan, policy S4(i) included, stays in force until a new plan is adopted, so any slippage extends the window for well placed edge-of-settlement land.

We expect the split with the National Park to be tested hardest at examination. The council's preferred figure assumed the park would take 158 homes a year, but the Park Authority's publication draft plan for 2026 to 2045 provides for up to 1,740 homes, 87 a year, allocates no sites and says the standard method for housing need is not directly applicable to national park authorities. If the inspector sides with the park, the difference would fall on the land the council controls, and its list of sites would look short.

Reorganisation adds a third timetable. On 16 July 2026 the government decided on two unitary councils for Derbyshire, placing the Dales in a Derbyshire North council with High Peak, Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire, Bolsover and the northern part of Amber Valley, due to start in April 2028. Then, on 7 September 2026, ministers paused that decision for review, with no timeline yet for the outcome. Derbyshire Dales District Council remains the authority deciding applications and taking its plan forward.

Support at Examination, or a Case Now While the Shortfall Lasts

Land in the draft plan needs its allocation supported at examination. Land outside it but well placed against a town or village has a case now, while the shortfall lasts. The how it works page explains what we take on at each stage, and the wider county picture is on our Derbyshire page.