Selling Land in Uttlesford

The plan's own supply table shows how little depends on new allocations. Councillors were told that more than 9,000 homes had been built or committed since 2021:

That is about 1,700 homes above the requirement, leaving little call for large new sites before a review. Windfall, homes on sites the plan does not name, accounts for 1,430, and that is where smaller plots come in.

The Allocations the Inspectors Confirmed

• Saffron Walden: around 879 homes and 2.5 hectares of employment land, on land south of Radwinter Road and north and south of Thaxted Road.
• Great Dunmow and Takeley: around 2,424 homes, led by North East Takeley at about 1,506 and North East Great Dunmow at about 715.
• Stansted Mountfitchet and Elsenham: 435 homes across three sites, including about 110 east of Station Road, Elsenham.
• Newport: 300 homes through a neighbourhood plan, no site above 99. If it is not made within two years of adoption, the council must plan for them itself.

Two safeguarded areas were dropped at examination: land south of Saffron Walden kept for a link road the plan did not need, and land to expand Forest Hall School in Stansted Mountfitchet, which the inspectors found inconsistent with Green Belt policy.

With the Green Belt confined to the south, most of Uttlesford is ordinary countryside. The routes we test:

1. Inside development limits. Plots, yards and large gardens within Saffron Walden, Great Dunmow, Stansted Mountfitchet and the larger villages are judged under policy S4 of the August 2026 framework, which favours approval unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits.
2. Beyond a village edge, outside the Green Belt. Policy S5 allows homes beyond a settlement's limits where there is evidenced unmet need, the land relates physically to the settlement and roads, schools and drainage can cope. A supply below five years counts as that evidence, although it is weighed rather than decisive.
3. In the southern Green Belt. S5 does not apply there. A field would need to be grey belt, and homes on grey belt also need evidenced need, which a result of 108% does not supply on its own. Previously developed land has its own route whatever the numbers.
4. Rural exception sites. Small affordable schemes for local people remain possible next to villages.

In February 2022 the government designated the council because too many of its major refusals were overturned at appeal, letting developers take schemes of more than ten homes or over a hectare straight to the Planning Inspectorate. That was lifted on 6 June 2025. Our farmland page explains what makes an edge-of-village field worth a closer look, and our grey belt guide covers the southern Green Belt.

• Plots, yards and backland inside Saffron Walden, Great Dunmow, Stansted Mountfitchet and the larger villages.
• Fields against the edge of Great Chesterford, Newport, Elsenham, Takeley or Thaxted, with a safe route to a road.
• Land outside the Countryside Protection Zone and clear of the airport's main noise contours.
• Previously developed land in the southern Green Belt, such as old yards or commercial sites with lawful buildings.
• Larger holdings suited to a future plan review.

We pay for the surveys, evidence and application, under an option at a price agreed on day one and set above the land's current value. You keep farming it, and if permission is not secured you keep the land and owe nothing. Our how it works page sets out the steps.