Selling Land in Cotswold District

• Fields next to one of the Principal Settlements, outside the National Landscape.
• Land close to Cirencester, Fairford, Lechlade, Kemble or Moreton-in-Marsh with a safe road access.
• Land adjoining one of the proposed strategic sites, where it could be planned alongside.
• Redundant farmyards, workshops and other previously developed land, including inside the National Landscape.
• Sites largely clear of the river flood plains and the wetter ground of the Water Park.
• Larger holdings that could provide homes with green space and biodiversity gain on the same land.

Our page on redundant yards and brownfield land explains how we look at sites that are already built on, which is often the route inside the National Landscape. For a wider view of the county, see our Gloucestershire 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 boundary of the National Landscape runs across the district, and a site on one side of it can have very different prospects from its neighbour on the other. Inside it, the protection of natural beauty carries great weight in every decision, and major schemes need exceptional circumstances and a clear public interest. Unmet need on its own does not meet that bar.

Outside, the picture is much more open. The council says around 95% of the development proposed in its new plan is outside the National Landscape, with development inside it limited to smaller, less sensitive sites. Its ten strategic sites, listed below, show where the council expects most of that growth to go.

Land Just Outside the Boundary

Fields next to the boundary are judged partly on how they affect the setting of the protected landscape: long views from the wolds, the approach to a market town, and how the edge of a village is seen. That rarely rules a site out, but it shapes how many homes fit and where the open space goes. Early landscape work, which we commission and pay for, usually decides the layout.

Since the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, public bodies, councils included, have had a firmer duty to seek to further the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of National Landscapes. The Cotswolds National Landscape Board publishes its own planning advice and planning responses. We design with that duty in mind, so the schemes we put forward try to give something back, such as new hedgerows, restored dry stone walls, woodland planting or new paths into the countryside, rather than only trying to avoid harm.

Until the new plan is adopted, the 2018 plan and national policy decide applications. With delivery below 75%, national policy S5 treats unmet housing need as evidenced, so land beyond a settlement boundary can be approved if it relates well to an existing settlement, the scale can be served, and the harm does not substantially outweigh the benefits. In Cotswold District that route is strongest outside the National Landscape.

The 2018 plan named seventeen Principal Settlements, from Cirencester and Tetbury to Andoversford, Blockley, Down Ampney, Kemble, South Cerney, Upper Rissington and Willersey. Those are the places where edge-of-settlement land has the clearest case, because the council has already accepted they can take growth.

There is almost no Green Belt. The adopted plan records just one small area, at Ullenwood, in Coberley parish, on the edge of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Green Belt. Everywhere else it is the National Landscape, heritage and flood risk that do the work.

In Cotswold District, then, the National Landscape boundary and the list of Principal Settlements are the two things to check first when selling land, well before the housing figures.

A Land Supply Measured Against the Doubled Need

The delivery result is not the only measure that falls short. The council's latest housing land supply report, published in June 2025, puts the supply at 1.8 years at 1 April 2024. The 2018 plan turned five in August 2023, so the report tests supply against the need the national formula now sets for the district, not the figure written into the plan:

The council's July 2026 topic paper on supply says it has been unable to show five years since the December 2024 framework changed the method, and expects that to continue until the new plan is adopted. For a landowner, a shortfall is evidence of unmet need under policy S5 in its own right, separate from the delivery result. It is not an automatic finding: the land must still be well related to a settlement and capable of being served, and inside the National Landscape the protection of the landscape still comes first.

Why the December Target Is Tight

The council's aim of submitting its plan by the end of December 2026 lines up with a national deadline. The government is running the old and new plan-making systems side by side through 2026, and plans can be submitted under the existing rules only until 31 December 2026. A plan that slipped past it would have to move to the new system, built around a 30-month process. So the weeks after the consultation closes carry unusual weight, and we will be watching whether submission happens on time.

A Stepped Requirement From 420 a Year, and One County Council on Hold

The Housing Delivery Test comes out once a year. The Housing Delivery Test 2025, released on 17 August 2026, covers April 2022 to March 2025, and the next edition will replace the earliest of those years with 2025/26. If the district moved above 75%, delivery would no longer trigger the unmet need route in policy S5 on its own, but the supply shortfall would still count as evidence of need, to be weighed, until the council could show five years again. The topic paper expects that only after adoption, and proposes a stepped requirement of 420 homes a year to 2031, rising to 1,030 and then 1,525. Protection inside the National Landscape, which never rested on housing figures, would not change either way, and an emerging plan gains weight at each stage it passes.

The government had settled on a single council for all of Gloucestershire from April 2028, replacing the county and the six districts. On 7 September 2026 it paused that decision for a review, and SoGlos reported that the May 2027 elections will now take place on existing boundaries. Cotswold District Council remains the body taking its plan to examination.

For an owner whose land sits outside the proposed strategic sites but close to a Principal Settlement, that points one way. The case for an application is generally at its strongest before the plan is submitted and examined, not after.