Selling Land in Epping Forest

• Land within walking distance of a Central line station, or of Roydon.
• Yards, depots and former nurseries with lawful commercial use.
• Fields enclosed by existing homes or roads on the edge of Epping, Ongar, Waltham Abbey, North Weald Bassett or the Loughton area.
• Sites that can be built without major new infrastructure, since quick delivery counts for more here.
• Land with a road frontage, or a clear route to one.

Near the forest, the planning work includes an assessment of the effects on the SAC as well as the usual surveys, and on a Lee Valley site it may need a lawful use certificate first. We agree a fixed price with you at the start and pay for all of it, through the application and any appeal. A refusal leaves the land with you and nothing to pay. The sequence from first review to completion is described on our how it works 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 council's own Housing Action Plan, published in August 2025, explains the delay. Between June 2018 and spring 2021 a moratorium held back planning permissions, because of concerns about air pollution harming the Epping Forest Special Area of Conservation. Permissions granted since then take years to become completed homes, and the largest sites in the plan have been slow to start.

Much of the 2023 plan relies on large strategic sites. Around 400 hectares are set aside for garden communities on the edge of Harlow, among them Latton Priory and East of Harlow, as part of the Harlow and Gilston Garden Town, and about 130 hectares for masterplan areas such as South of Epping, North Weald Bassett and Waltham Abbey North. The outline planning application for Latton Priory, for up to 1,340 homes, was refused by the council in February 2026 and is now at appeal, and the council itself names slow build-out on large sites as a risk.

1. A stepped requirement. The council plans for around 500 homes a year to 2026/27, rising to 980 a year from 2027/28.
2. A 20% buffer. Because delivery has fallen short, a buffer is added to the supply it must show.
3. Unmet need in national policy. The 66% result means the district is treated as having evidenced unmet housing need, and the supply shortfall is further evidence of it.
4. A review within five years. National policy expects plans to be reviewed at least every five years, which for a plan adopted on 6 March 2023 points to March 2028.

The latest statement shows how narrow the gap is. It counts 4,304 deliverable homes against a five-year requirement of 4,254, which already includes 314 homes to recover past under-delivery. The supply would cover that requirement on its own; the 20% buffer lifts the bar above it and brings the result down to 4.22 years. Closing the gap would take roughly 800 more deliverable homes within those five years.

Much of the gap sits with the big Harlow sites, which come with their own roads and schools to build before many homes can follow. That is why a modest field on the edge of Epping, Ongar or North Weald Bassett, able to start soon after permission, can carry more weight with the council than its size suggests.

Within the built-up areas of the towns and larger villages, a plot already has national policy S4 on its side. Step past that line and the 66% result stops counting for much, because the S5 shortfall route does not reach Green Belt land. Open fields here have three realistic ways forward:

• Grey belt. On the London side of the district, around Loughton, Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell, land often matters for holding back the capital's outward spread, and that is hard to overcome. Further out, between Epping, North Weald Bassett and Ongar, the question is more often whether a field keeps two settlements from meeting. The grey belt guide sets out each purpose.
• Stations. With eight Central line stops in the district, policy L3 matters more here than almost anywhere else in Essex. It now favours denser housing within an easy walk of a stop with a good service, including on some Green Belt land. Commentators suggest around 800 metres, so a field on the edge of Theydon Bois or Debden could be in range even though it looks rural.
• Previously developed land. Commercial yards, depots and land with lawful non-agricultural buildings have their own route in Green Belt policy.

Land that meets none of these will usually need to come forward through the plan review, which will be prepared against the government's current method for calculating housing need.

Each edition of the Housing Delivery Test adds up three years of building, and a new one appears every year; the latest, the Housing Delivery Test 2025, arrived on 17 August 2026. If a future result reached 75% or more, the district would stop being treated automatically as having unmet need, though the 20% buffer would stay until results reach 85%. That alone would not settle the matter. A supply shortfall is evidence of unmet need in its own right, so the argument for well placed land would only weaken once both measures had improved. The council has not given a date for its next annual supply statement.

Two live matters now sit with the Planning Inspectorate. Since 15 June 2026 the council has been designated for the quality of its decisions on major development, and until the government revokes the designation, schemes of 10 or more homes, or housing sites of half a hectare or more, can be submitted straight to the inspectorate. The council keeps smaller schemes, including housing of fewer than 10 homes. Separately, the Latton Priory appeal will show how the inspectorate weighs one of the plan's own strategic allocations when the council has refused it. It will be heard at a public inquiry, and when the council confirmed in July 2026 that it would defend its decision, no inquiry dates had been set.

Further out, the West Essex question is open again. On 25 March 2026 the government announced five new unitary councils for Greater Essex, with Epping Forest, Harlow and Uttlesford due to form a single West Essex council from 1 April 2028. The government withdrew it on 7 September 2026 and has started a review, so the May 2027 elections will be for the district council as it is today. For now Epping Forest District Council is responsible for the March 2028 review point and the next full plan, though a later reorganisation could still pass that work to a larger council looking across both sides of the Harlow boundary.

For timing, that splits land into two groups. Plots inside settlements, grey belt fields and lawful yards can be tested now, while the delivery result and the supply shortfall both count. Larger fields that need the Green Belt boundary redrawn will more probably wait for the next full plan, and the surveys we pay for today are what we would put into its call for sites.