Selling Land in High Peak

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edge of Buxton, Chapel-en-le-Frith or Whaley Bridge, outside the Green Belt and outside the National Park.
• Land beside the larger villages, such as Dove Holes, Peak Dale or Chinley, that sits well against the existing houses.
• Green Belt land in the north of the plan area that is enclosed by roads or building and may qualify as grey belt.
• Former mills, works, yards and depots, which national policy supports reusing, in or out of the Green Belt.
• Plots and backland inside the settlement boundaries of the five market towns.
• Larger holdings that could be put forward for the plan to 2041.

Land inside the park boundary faces a much narrower path, and we will say so plainly in our review. For land that fits, we meet every planning cost, from the first surveys through to any appeal, and the price is fixed in an option agreement at the outset, above the land's current value. You keep farming or letting the land meanwhile, and if permission is not secured you keep it and owe nothing. Farmers may find our farmland page a useful starting point.

• 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 Peak District National Park Authority is the planning authority inside the park boundary, and its guidance for applicants sends anyone outside the boundary to the local council, listing High Peak among them. Outside the park the borough decides, and the land it controls is judged in quite different ways depending on where it sits:

For an owner selling land for development in Glossopdale, the Green Belt row is usually the one that applies, while around Buxton and Chapel-en-le-Frith the countryside row comes up more often, as it did at Crossings Road.

Only one change to the Green Belt came with the 2016 plan: the council concluded there was no net benefit in wider boundary changes and removed only some land at Furness Vale, to allow housing. Everywhere else the line drawn before 2016 still holds, which is why the grey belt test matters so much in the north of the plan area. Our grey belt guide explains how a field is judged against the purposes of the Green Belt and the need test that follows.

On 20 April 2026 the council's Development Control Committee approved BDW Trading's outline application HPK/2025/0447 for up to 180 homes on about nine hectares of sheep pasture on the western edge of Chapel-en-le-Frith. The officer report is plain about the land: it lies outside the built-up area boundary, in open countryside, is not allocated and conflicts with the development plan. The parish council called it an unallocated urban extension beyond the settlement boundary, and 288 objections were received.

Four Tests in Policy H1, and the One It Failed

Policy H1 of the 2016 plan lets the council consider sustainable sites beyond a built-up area boundary only where all four of its tests are met:

• Adjoining and well related. The land adjoins the boundary, fits the existing pattern of development and suits the settlement's scale.
• No prominent intrusion. It does not intrude prominently into the countryside or harm its character significantly.
• Reachable services. Schools, doctors and shops can be reached on foot, by bike or by public transport.
• Infrastructure. Local and strategic infrastructure can meet the extra demand.

Crossings Road adjoins the town on its south-eastern side and has houses on three sides, and officers found it passed three tests but failed the second, because of its spread into open fields west of Crossings Road. They were clear that it "would not be supported as a matter of principle" if the council could show five years of supply. Without it, the council applied the presumption in favour of sustainable development in the December 2024 framework then in force, the so-called tilted balance, under which permission is granted unless the harm significantly and demonstrably outweighs the benefits. Officers judged the landscape and visual harm moderate and permanent, set it against up to 180 homes, 54 of them affordable, and construction work and local spending, and recommended approval. The committee agreed.

The same land shows how much the supply position matters. An application for a single house there was refused in January 2023, and an inspector dismissed the appeal in February 2024, when, as the report notes, the council could show five years and its housing policies carried full weight. Officers took the same approach on five bungalows off Brown Edge Close in Buxton, approved at the same meeting, where they treated policies S2, S3, H1 and EQ3 as out of date for want of a five-year supply.

The August 2026 framework now puts land beyond a settlement's edge under policy S5, where a supply shortfall is evidence of unmet need to be weighed against the harm, not an automatic finding, and S5 does not reach the Green Belt. Crossings Road carried no protective designation of the kind national policy lists, which is what allowed the balance to be struck at all.

What the Permission Carries

The report sets out what the legal agreement and conditions secure:

• Affordable homes. 30%, or 54 homes: 43 for social rent and 11 for shared ownership, all to national space standards.
• Schools. Up to £1,001,394.24 for 32 extra places at Chapel High School, which has 943 pupils on roll against a capacity of 925, and up to £171,127.13 for special educational needs places. The 45 primary pupils fit at the town's primary school, so nothing was sought for them.
• Health. Up to £180,000 for GP practices in the Goyt Valley.
• Recreation. Play areas on site, plus £204,168 towards the Memorial Park, allotments, a grass pitch and a 3G pitch.
• Travel. £10,000 to monitor a travel plan and a £102,600 bond, payable to the county council when work starts.
• Nature and heritage. A 10% biodiversity gain on site, monitored for 30 years, and the northern field beside three Grade II listed cottages kept free of building.

That is more than £1.6 million, counting the bond, on top of the affordable homes and the land given to open space. Our guide to Section 106 and CIL explains how these sums are set, and we build them into our assessment from the start. The wider lesson is that a well related field outside the Green Belt, on the edge of a market town, can succeed in High Peak today without an allocation, because the missing supply carries real weight in the balance. With five years in place, the same field would have been opposed in principle.

The council's Local Development Scheme of January 2026 keeps the review under the current plan-making system, before the new one takes effect, and cites both the national reforms and reorganisation as reasons for the timetable:

The council's plan review page still shows only the 2023 early engagement, which drew 99 comments, and no draft plan, so the first quarter of 2026 has passed without the draft stage; in April 2026 officers described the emerging plan as in its infancy, too early to count in decisions. The council did invite fresh site suggestions, with a deadline of 2 July 2026, and said that sites put forward since January 2023 need not be resubmitted unless something has changed. The later dates are likely to move, but the order will not: the draft plan is the first real sight of which sites the council prefers, and evidence prepared before then carries most weight. For the stages in order, and what an owner can do at each, see our guide to how a site enters a local plan.

A Gap Still to Be Recounted, and a Merger on Hold

The next full supply statement will show whether permissions such as Crossings Road have narrowed the gap; until one appears, decisions rest on the count made at 1 April 2023. The Housing Delivery Test 2025, released on 17 August 2026, leaves the borough at 121% with none of its consequences applying, though with completions falling the next results are worth watching. The thresholds sit well below the current result: 95% for an action plan, 85% for the heavier 20% supply buffer, and 75% for the point at which national policy stops asking for proof of unmet need.

The government's July 2026 decision would have folded High Peak into a new Derbyshire North Council from April 2028, and the borough's reorganisation page records that on 7 September 2026 the government paused that decision to review it, with no timescale known. There are no immediate changes to services, and High Peak Borough Council still decides applications and prepares the plan.

Countryside Now, Green Belt on Two Tracks, Park Land Rarely

• Countryside outside the Green Belt and the park has its strongest case now, while the shortfall lasts and before a new plan with fresh allocations is adopted.
• Green Belt land in the north can be looked at as possible grey belt now, and put forward for the new plan at the same time.
• Land inside the park rarely suits general housing, whatever the borough's numbers.

The rest of the county is covered on our Derbyshire page.