Selling Land in Forest of Dean District

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edge of Lydney, Newent, Coleford or Cinderford.
• Land beside the major villages, such as Bream, Mitcheldean, Newnham on Severn or Tutshill and Sedbury, at a scale that suits them.
• Larger holdings around the four towns that could help shape the new plan to 2046.
• Former yards, depots and commercial sites within or beside a settlement.
• Land mostly in Flood Zone 1, clear of the Severn flood plain.

Land inside the Wye Valley National Landscape or the Crown Forest is harder, and we will say so plainly. For the rest, we pay for the surveys, the landscape and ecology work and the application, under an option whose price is fixed on signing, above the land's present worth. Farming carries on as normal meanwhile, and should permission not come, the land remains yours with nothing owed to us. Our farmland page explains what we look for in a holding.

• 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 delivery test looks back over April 2022 to March 2025, and the 991 homes it asked of the district sit in line with the older need figure of about 330 a year. The five-year supply looks forward, and since the standard method changed in December 2024 it has been measured against about 600 homes a year, close to double. The council's Housing Delivery Note 2024 to 2025 sets out the sum for the five years from April 2025:

The note's own figures do not quite reach its headline. Worked through, 1,253 homes against 3,150 comes to just under two years, and an earlier paragraph of the same note counts 1,175 deliverable homes, which is less again. The monitoring report settles on 1.93 years, within a range it gives as starting from 1.81 years. On any of these readings the gap to five years is more than 1,800 homes, and the council accepts that it cannot show five years.

Building has also slowed. The note records 517 net completions in 2022/23, 431 in 2023/24 and 327 in 2024/25, when Lydney saw 89, Newent 61, Coleford 35 and Cinderford 28.

On the edge of Lydney and Newent, where most of last year's homes were built, that slowdown means the existing sites are not closing the gap on their own, which is where well placed new land comes in.

What the Shortfall Means for a Field

Policy S5 of the August 2026 framework allows homes beyond a settlement's boundary where unmet need is evidenced, and a five-year supply shortfall is one recognised way of evidencing it. It is not an automatic pass. The land has to sit well against the town or village beside it, and roads, schools and drainage must be able to take the homes. Inside settlement boundaries, policy S4 leans towards approval unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits.

The monitoring report, written under the previous framework, is candid about the effect: with the balance tilted towards approval, it says, this "can lead (and has led)" to homes in the open countryside.

Scale still matters. The 2026 draft expected large villages such as Blakeney, Longhope and St Briavels to take schemes of typically fewer than ten homes, and small villages such as Alvington and Aylburton typically one, two or three. That draft has gone, but a scheme far beyond those scales is hard to argue. Our page on paddocks and small sites covers the smaller end.

The Wye Valley National Landscape

The Wye Valley National Landscape partnership names Forest of Dean District Council as one of three councils whose planning policies take account of the need to conserve and enhance the area's natural beauty. The 2026 draft gave priority to conserving the landscape within the National Landscape and the Crown Forest areas. National policy allows major development inside the boundary only in exceptional circumstances.

The Estuary, the Bat Sites and the Wye

The council's habitats assessment, prepared for the 2026 draft, screens six protected sites, from the Severn Estuary and Walmore Common to the River Wye and the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean Bat Sites. It records that the district works with a 6.2 kilometre zone for judging homes that could add visitor pressure on the estuary. Under the council's interim bat guidance of July 2021, land near roosts falls into very sensitive, highly sensitive or sensitive locations, each with its own survey approach. The assessment also records concerns about nutrients in the Wye, especially phosphate. None of this rules a site out, but each calls for surveys, which are part of the planning cost we carry.

Flood Risk Along the Severn

The 2026 draft treated land at risk of flooding as unsuitable for almost all forms of development, with allowances for rising sea levels and more extreme floods. Along the Severn, the flood map is our first check. Our guide to flood risk and development land explains the tests.