Selling Land in Tendring

• Fields of 2 acres or more against the edge of Clacton, Harwich and Dovercourt, or the smaller towns.
• Land beside the district's villages, where the plan looks for proportionate growth.
• Sites wholly or mostly above the tidal flood extent, away from the protected estuary edges.
• Farmyards, redundant commercial sites and paddocks within or beside a settlement.
• Larger holdings near the proposed garden villages or Harwich that could support planned growth.

For a working holding, our page on farmland describes how we assess it. Land out on the marshes, in the Dedham Vale, or on an eroding frontage is much harder, and we say so in our review.

• 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 Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment published with the submission plan in August 2026 measures supply against the standard method rather than the adopted 550 a year. National policy makes that switch once a plan's housing figure is more than five years old, and Section 1, which holds it, dates from January 2021. The assessment then gives two results, depending on what is counted:

The council is clear about which figure applies where. For development management, its supply rests on permissions, small sites, windfall and adopted allocations, and comes to 3.52 years. The 5.04 years adds sites that are only proposed in an unadopted plan, and the council uses it to show the new plan can deliver a five-year supply once in force. Until then, 3.52 years is the council's own figure for applications and appeals.

Policy S5 With No Green Belt in the Way

Policy S5, in the framework the government published in August 2026, treats a supply below five years as evidence that homes are needed. S5 does not apply in the Green Belt, but Tendring has none, so it can reach the edge of any town or village from Brightlingsea to Manningtree. It is never automatic, and it still asks a lot of a site: the land must relate well to the settlement it adjoins, and the roads, schools, surgeries and drainage must be able to take the homes, now or with planned improvements. Our guide to the August 2026 NPPF sets out the full wording.

If you are thinking of selling a field on the edge of Clacton, Harwich or one of the villages, it is the 3.52 years figure, not the 5.04 years, that an application would be judged against today.

The submission plan provides for at least 18,173 homes for the years 2026 to 2043. About 10,700 of them are already accounted for, on sites carried forward from the last plan, sites with permission or under way in 2025, and small and windfall sites. The rest comes from new growth locations:

• Three new garden villages, at Hare Green, Horsley Cross and Weeley, which the plan says could deliver around 10,000 homes over 20 to 30 years, with 4,000 to 5,000 of them by 2043.
• Major growth in the Harwich area, while Clacton's sites are mostly carried forward from the last plan.
• Proportionate growth in and around the district's other towns and villages.
• Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community, planned before this review and already adopted.

The assessment counts 18,334 homes of capacity against the 18,173 required. The margin of 161 homes is less than two months of the annual requirement, so if an inspector trims a garden village or finds its early years too optimistic, the council would need land from somewhere else.

The Garden Community on the Colchester Border

The Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community is planned for around 7,500 homes, with at least 30% affordable and about 25 hectares of employment land. Tendring adopted its plan for the site on 20 May 2025. The land assessment expects about 1,950 homes on the Tendring side between 2026 and 2043, half of the 3,900 it expects across the whole site in that time. Close to half of the community would therefore come after 2043.

The consultation ran from 7 September until 5pm on 19 October 2026. Comments on the earlier draft did not carry forward: only responses made at this stage go before the inspector.

For owners near Hare Green, Horsley Cross or Weeley, a margin of 161 homes means the garden villages' early years will be tested hard, and nearby land that can be shown to deliver is worth having ready for that debate.

The council's Local Development Scheme, updated in December 2025, puts submission for examination in late 2026, hearings in summer 2027 and adoption in winter 2027. It also sets out a possible Community Infrastructure Levy, with adoption pencilled in for spring 2027 if the viability work supports one. Our guide to section 106 and CIL explains how the two work together.

The Council's 5.04-Year Case for Its Plan

Once the plan is adopted, its allocations would count towards supply as well. The council's plan-making figure of 5.04 years, measured against 1,069 a year, is its own case that the plan can deliver five years. We do not predict the outcome of the examination, but the shortfall route is strongest in the period before adoption.

The delivery test changes little here. The Housing Delivery Test 2025 appeared on 17 August 2026 and is repeated annually. At 152%, the council sits far above the 95% line where the test's consequences begin, so supply is the figure to follow.

Reorganisation has also stalled. In March 2026 the government decided Tendring would become part of a North East Essex Council, with elections in May 2027 and the new councils taking over in April 2028. On 7 September 2026 it withdrew its Essex decision and began a review, and the May 2027 elections will use existing boundaries. Tendring District Council remains the body taking its plan to examination.

Edge Land Now, Plan Land at the 2027 Hearings

• Land on a settlement edge can be assessed now under S5, while the council shows 3.52 years and the plan is unadopted.
• Land that belongs in the plan needed a response to the consultation, which closed on 19 October 2026, and that response is what goes before the hearings in 2027.
• Every route takes time. Our guide to how long planning takes sets out the stages.