Selling Land in Tewkesbury Borough

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edges of Tewkesbury, Bishop's Cleeve or Winchcombe.
• Land beside service villages such as Twyning, Gotherington, Highnam or Shurdington, at a scale that suits the village.
• Green Belt parcels between Cheltenham and Gloucester that may be grey belt, or that carry lawful buildings or hardstanding.
• Larger holdings that could contribute to the joint plan or the Garden Communities work.
• Land mostly in Flood Zone 1.

We pay for the flood, highways, landscape and ecology work, and the option fixes your price at the beginning, above the land's present value. The land stays in your hands and your use until completion, and a refusal leaves you owning it and owing us nothing. Our comparison of option and promotion agreements explains why we work this way.

• 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 gap between the headline result and the supply comes from what each counts. The delivery figure takes in the urban extensions built for Cheltenham and Gloucester. The council's five-year supply statement, published in November 2024 and measured at 31 March 2024, leaves those sites out and counts only homes towards Tewkesbury's own need. On that basis local completions ran at 933 in 2017/18 and 980 in 2018/19, then between 301 and 434 a year from 2019/20 to 2023/24. In the two latest years, 309 and 371 homes were built against requirements of 557 and 554.

The biggest contributors are land at Fiddington (227 homes in the five years), land south east of Bluebell Road (174), land north west of Fiddington (172) and Stoke Road, Bishop's Cleeve (107). The statement explains that the Joint Core Strategy turned five on 11 December 2022, which is why local need, not the plan's figure, is the yardstick.

Why the Statement Is Now Dated

It applied the framework of December 2023. The standard method has changed since, and the joint plan work put the homes required in Tewkesbury at 12,600 over twenty years in December 2025, about 630 a year. Set against a higher figure, the same supply would cover fewer years. We have found no later statement from the council, so 3.65 years remains the latest published position.

How the Council Treats Sites Outside the Plan

In September 2023 an inspector allowed 45 homes at Truman's Farm, Gotherington, finding the council could not show five years of supply. Two months later the council adopted an Interim Housing Position Statement setting out what it looks for in unallocated sites, including:

• a location well related to an existing sustainable settlement, with access to facilities;
• a scale in keeping with the settlement's place in the hierarchy;
• land at the lowest risk of flooding;
• no inappropriate development in the Green Belt;
• a scheme that is deliverable and viable, with the infrastructure it needs.

Those criteria sit comfortably with national policy S5, introduced in August 2026. It backs homes beyond a boundary where the land relates well to the town or village next to it, services can cope and unmet need is shown, and Tewkesbury's shortfall counts as evidence of that need for the decision-maker to weigh, not as an automatic pass. S5 does not reach Green Belt land.

Beside Tewkesbury, Bishop's Cleeve, Winchcombe or a service village, those interim criteria show in the council's own words what it looks for, and land for sale that meets them starts from firmer ground.

The Joint Core Strategy took land to the east of M5 junction 10 and to the west of the West Cheltenham allocation out of the Green Belt and safeguarded it for longer-term needs, which normally means it waits for a plan review such as the joint plan. The strategy also stresses keeping Cheltenham separate from Gloucester, and describes the Green Belt as part of what delineates the two.

Policy S5 does not apply there, so grey belt is the route. Land that makes only a weak contribution to Green Belt purposes can qualify. National policy allows homes on grey belt land only where the need for them is evidenced, usually by a supply short of five years, as here, or a delivery result below 75%. Major schemes must then meet the Golden Rules on affordable housing, infrastructure and green space. Parcels whose job is to stop the towns merging will be hard to argue, while those already enclosed by roads, homes or the new extensions may not be. Our grey belt guide sets out the test, and old yards and depots, which have their own route, are covered on our brownfield and yards page.

An owner of the safeguarded land east of junction 10 or west of West Cheltenham is in a different position, and is best placed with evidence ready for the joint plan rather than with an application made ahead of it.

Flood Risk First

Flood risk runs through the borough. Tewkesbury itself lies where the Severn and Avon meet, the Joint Core Strategy carries its own flood policy, and the council's interim criteria ask for land at the lowest risk. On any holding near a river, we map the flood zones before we look at anything else.