Selling Land in Eastleigh

Between a supply shortfall that supports applications now and a plan review due to publish its preferred sites in 2027, the land we look for here is wider than the four strategic options:

• Fields on the edge of Fair Oak, West End, Bursledon or Hedge End that sit outside the nine settlement gaps, or at their well contained margins.
• Land beside the new neighbourhoods at Horton Heath and Boorley Green that could share their access and drainage.
• Plots and older commercial buildings in the urban areas, where the Issues and Options paper puts potential capacity at around 2,160 homes, including along the Southampton Road corridor it wants transformed in Eastleigh town centre.
• Land within walking distance of Eastleigh or Southampton Airport Parkway stations on the main line.
• Small sites of the kind the plan already relies on: it allows for 1,475 homes from windfall over its period, about 116 a year.
• Larger farm holdings where lower lying land could become the wetland, habitat or open space the council proposed, in its Issues and Options paper, to allocate for environmental mitigation, alongside homes on the better placed part.

Harder land is open countryside that relates to no settlement. The adopted plan's countryside policy allows little housing there beyond conversions, replacements and rural workers' homes, and land deep in the Itchen or Hamble valleys faces flood risk as well. We tell you plainly if your land falls there.

• 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 adopted plan sets a minimum of 14,580 new homes from 2016 to 2036. It was meant to include a large new community north of Bishopstoke and Fair Oak, but the inspector recommended deleting that Strategic Growth Option, leaving a shortfall of 2,614 homes. The plan itself therefore committed the council to begin updating it within a year of adoption.

The large allocations that did survive are still being built, and the council's supply statement shows how they have moved on since the plan was written:

Why Horton Heath Looks Bigger Than the Plan

The plan shows Horton Heath at about 1,500 homes; the supply statement adds up to about 2,500. The first is what the council allocated in 2022, the second the permissions since granted, which is what now counts towards supply. For a neighbouring landowner the later figure matters more, because it sets the roads, school places and drainage that will exist around the site.

For an owner selling land elsewhere in the borough, the deleted growth option matters as much as the sites that survived: a plan that began thousands of homes short leaves room for land it never allocated.

• Phosphorus for the Itchen. The council's interim strategy of July 2022 applies phosphorus neutrality in the River Itchen catchment, covering parts of Eastleigh, Bishopstoke and Fair Oak and reaching out to Horton Heath and West End, and to homes in Chandler's Ford and Eastleigh served by the Chickenhall treatment works, which discharges to the river.
• Nitrogen for the Solent. The council has run a nitrogen neutrality scheme since 2020 for the Solent's protected waterways and coast.
• Council credits. The 2022 strategy offered phosphate credits from council-owned land taken out of farming, alongside mitigation designed into a site's own drainage.
• Recreational pressure. The issues paper lists visitor disturbance of the Solent's protected sites among the borough's constraints.

These costs come out of the value of a scheme. They are part of the planning work we commission and pay for, and on a larger holding some of the land can supply the mitigation for homes on the rest.

The government publishes the Housing Delivery Test each year. The Housing Delivery Test 2025, out since 17 August 2026, covers April 2022 to March 2025. In the 2023 measurement, which the council's January 2026 statement quoted, Eastleigh scored 122%, so the action plan is new territory for it. A fall below 85% in the next result would require a 20% buffer on delivery grounds too. A fall below 75% would treat unmet need as established outright. Reaching 95% would remove the need for an action plan, though on its own it would leave the supply shortfall untouched.

April 2027 is the date that matters for supply. The January 2026 statement measures supply against the adopted plan's 729 homes a year. National policy switches to the government's standard method once a plan is more than five years old, and Eastleigh's reaches that point in April 2027, two years before the new plan is due. The standard method now gives 921 homes a year, so the bar would rise. We are not predicting the next supply figure.

A Plan Restarted in June 2026, and the Southampton Merger Withdrawn

The council restarted its plan under the new national system in June 2026, describing it as a change of process rather than a fresh start. Its published timetable shows:

• A scoping consultation, which ran from 20 August to 24 September 2026.
• A Gateway 1 self-assessment on 29 October 2026.
• Consultation on the proposed plan content, including preferred sites, from 3 June to 15 July 2027.
• Consultation on the full plan from 1 June to 27 July 2028, submission on 26 October 2028 and adoption on 26 April 2029.

A government decision of 25 March 2026 would have combined Eastleigh and Southampton in a South West Hampshire unitary council from 1 April 2028. That decision was withdrawn on 7 September 2026 while ministers review the process. The plan is being prepared for the current borough, Eastleigh still decides applications, and the May 2027 local elections take place on existing boundaries.

An Application Now, the Plan in Parallel

Preferred sites will not be published until mid 2027, and adoption is set for 2029. Land that already works on its own merits is usually better put forward by application now, while the supply shortfall stands, with the plan as a parallel route. Our agreements continue while any application or appeal is being decided, and option and promotion agreements compared sets out how the two models differ.