Selling Land in Eastbourne

Eastbourne Borough Council covers a coastal town of about 101,700 people on 44 square kilometres, immediately east of Beachy Head, with regular trains to London Victoria. The Core Strategy divides it into fourteen neighbourhoods, from the Town Centre, Seaside and Upperton to Old Town, Hampden Park, Langney and Sovereign Harbour.

• The lowest delivery result in the county. The council delivered 513 homes against 2,224 required in the Housing Delivery Test 2025, a result of 23%, in the band where national policy treats unmet need as evidenced.
• A plan 13 years old. The Core Strategy dates from February 2013, so supply is measured against the standard method.
• Over 40% of the borough is National Park. The council's monitoring report of December 2025 places more than two fifths of the borough in the South Downs National Park, west of the town.
• A boundary drawn tight against Wealden. The council's delivery test action plan lists a tightly drawn boundary with Wealden to the north and east, the Channel to the south and a large area of flood risk centred on Eastbourne Park.

With so little open land inside the borough, the route matters more than the size of a site, and land just over the boundary in Wealden, covered on our East Sussex page, deserves its own look.

The council's Housing Delivery Test action plan of June 2025 answers the 2023 test, 535 homes against 1,880 required, and is candid about the causes:

• Almost everything is small. There are very few large sites: 91 of the 111 sites that delivered the 535 homes provided fewer than five each.
• Most of it is brownfield. Higher existing use values and more expensive remediation weigh on viability.
• Flats dominate. With a zero Community Infrastructure Levy rate on apartments, over 70% of homes since the levy was adopted have been flats.
• Permissions go unbuilt. Around 28% of permitted homes have not been built out.

The monitoring report gives the long run: 3,902 net new homes since 2006, an average of 4.8 a site, against a cumulative target of 4,560, and just 94 in 2024/25, the lowest year in its table. Since 2018, it says, 1,200 homes have come at 171 a year even with the presumption in favour of sustainable development applying, and it concludes that the presumption has not had a positive impact on delivery. Policy support has been available here for years; what has been missing is land.

The replacement is the Eastbourne Local Plan 2022 to 2042, for the borough outside the National Park. The Land Availability Assessment of February 2026 set no minimum site size, identified 945 sites (27 through the call for sites), removed 47 lying wholly in the functional floodplain and found 158 deliverable, developable or potentially developable for housing. It concludes that the plan will provide for between 4,472 and 6,343 homes.

The Local Development Scheme of February 2026 moved the draft plan consultation to February and March 2026 after delays to critical evidence studies. On 16 September 2026 cabinet endorsed the proposed plan and recommended that full council approve a six-week representation period, which the council's announcement said would start on 2 October 2026. It gives an assessed need of 11,730 homes to 2042 by the standard method and a capacity-based requirement of around 4,400, citing flood risk, the National Park, limited land and the sea.

Those numbers do not quite match the council's other documents. Around 4,400 sits just below the 4,472 at the bottom of the assessment's range, and 11,730 over twenty years is about 587 homes a year, below the 714 a year the monitoring report uses for supply. The announcement explains neither gap, so the published plan and its evidence are where to look. Either way, around 4,400 homes is well under half of the assessed need.

Eastbourne has little of the ring of fields that policy S5 usually works on, so the routes here are narrower, and one runs across the boundary:

1. Inside the town: policy S4. Plots, large gardens, backland and underused buildings within the built-up area fall under policy S4, which says approve unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits. With the land assessment finding 15 Town Centre sites capable of more than 150 homes a hectare, a central site can be worth more than its size suggests.
2. Previously developed land outside the Park. Yards, depots, garages and car parks are the raw material of a plan that wants at least 70% of its homes on brownfield land. Our brownfield and yards page sets out what we look for; remediation and existing use value are costs we carry.
3. The few edge parcels outside the Park. A field or paddock adjoining the built-up area, outside the National Park and the functional floodplain, falls under policy S5 with need already evidenced by the 23% result.
4. Through the new plan. The call for sites portal has been permanently open since March 2025. Our guide to calls for sites and local plans explains where evidence does most good.
5. Just over the boundary in Wealden. Polegate, Stone Cross, Westham and Pevensey belong to Eastbourne's wider area but lie in Wealden, which decides applications there on its own figures. Wealden published its Regulation 19 plan in September 2026 and has reopened its call for sites for sites of five or more homes.

Each route needs evidence that small owners find hard to fund alone, from contamination and viability studies to a density case, and we pay for all of it under an option agreement.