Selling Land in Havant

The council's June 2026 land availability assessment admits that, with so little land to go round, its call for sites in practice never closes. It looks at sites for five or more homes, and the way it sifts them tells us where to start:

• Yards, depots and older commercial premises inside the settlement boundary, where the new plan's Policy 2 accepts development in principle. Its own allocations include Goodwillies Timber Yard, the former Electricity Board site on Bartons Road and the Portsmouth Water headquarters.
• Former schools, care homes and other institutional sites, of the kind the plan allocates at the former Oak Park School and at Belmont Castle Rest Home on Portsdown Hill Road.
• Land in and around Havant, Waterlooville and Leigh Park town centres, which the assessment names as broad locations for new homes.
• Mainland fields at the edge of Waterlooville, Cowplain, Purbrook, Bedhampton or Emsworth that lie mostly outside Flood Zones 2 and 3, since the assessment discounts sites that fall entirely or almost entirely within them.
• Fields on the lower tiers of the Solent Wader and Brent Goose network. The assessment treats only Core and Primary Support Areas as unsuitable without significant evidence to the contrary.

Some land is harder here, and we say so. Greenfield land on Hayling Island is held back by the flood risk to its road, Core and Primary Support bird sites face a high bar, and the plan says the council does not treat any part of the borough as rural for the national exception route for small affordable schemes. We still look at every site we are sent, and tell you plainly where yours stands.

• 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 pre-submission plan runs to 2043. It records a need for 15,822 homes over that period under the 2024 standard method, or 879 a year, and provides for 7,087 net new homes, an average of 337 a year. The council states plainly that, under the strategy it has chosen, the standard method need is not met, although the need for employment land is.

The reasons are physical. Hayling Island is excluded from greenfield allocations because of the flood risk to its single road on and off the island, and much of the mainland is already built up. The plan leans instead on urban regeneration in Havant, Waterlooville and Leigh Park town centres, on further phases west of Waterlooville, and on a large greenfield allocation at Southleigh. It also notes that Portsmouth City Council is a major landowner in the borough, with several allocations on its land.

Why You May See 879 or 887 Homes a Year

The plan uses 879 homes a year, taken from the 2024 run of the standard method. The council's December 2025 land supply update uses 887, which it describes as the most recent calculation. The method is re-run as new affordability data is published, so small movements between documents are expected. Neither figure changes the picture for a landowner: both are far above the 337 a year the plan can find room for.

The council says it has worked with its neighbours through the Partnership for South Hampshire, which has agreed a non-statutory position statement on meeting housing need across the area, and through individual statements of common ground with neighbouring councils.

For an owner selling land in Havant, the distance between the 337 homes a year the plan can place and the need it accepts is the reason an unallocated site on the mainland edge still deserves a careful look.

Most of the borough's constraints come from the water. The plan points to international and national nature designations along the coast, and says development is avoided on constrained sites, notably in the Chichester Harbour National Landscape and on Hayling Island.

• Brent geese and waders. The plan carries a specific policy, Policy 26, for fields identified in the Solent Wader and Brent Goose Strategy, where overwintering birds feed and roost. Whether a field is on that network is one of the first things we check.
• Nutrients. New homes must not add to nutrient pollution in the harbours. The council points to its award winning Warblington Farm initiative, and says its Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund will work across the wider catchment, with safeguards, so that homes in the borough can be supported by mitigation elsewhere in the catchment.
• Hayling's access. The council's June 2026 infrastructure plan describes the A3023 bridge onto the island as vulnerable, and lists the Langstone flood defence scheme, costed at £17.98m and programmed for 2025 to 2027, to protect the island's access and nearby coastal communities.
• Flood zones on the mainland. Land in Flood Zones 2 or 3 needs a site-specific flood assessment, and the sequential test applies. Our guide to flood risk and development land explains both.

None of these rules a site out unseen. Each calls for evidence before an application goes in, which we commission and pay for.

The council expects to submit the Building a Better Future Plan for examination before the end of 2026. Its December 2025 Local Development Scheme ties that to the government's transitional arrangements, which require plans to be submitted by the end of the 2026 calendar year, and shows examination running into 2027, with dates still to be confirmed. At the hearings, the gap between 7,087 homes and a need of more than 15,000 is likely to be a central question, and the inspector's view of it will shape how much weight the plan carries once adopted.

A 20% Buffer, the Southleigh Decision and a Withdrawn Merger

Three things are worth watching before the hearings. The first is the delivery test: the Housing Delivery Test 2025 was published on 17 August 2026 and covers April 2022 to March 2025. At 80%, Havant keeps its 20% buffer. A fall below 75%, where the earlier result behind the December 2025 update sat, would make unmet need proven outright under policy S5. A rise to 85% or more would bring the buffer down to 5%, but the council's supply was 1.6 years even with no buffer at all, so a shortfall would remain on those figures.

The second is supply. The most recent supply update is dated December 2025. The Southleigh outline application is the other decision to watch: approval would add a large source of supply over many years, and whatever conditions the council attaches on roads and schools will set expectations for land nearby.

The third is reorganisation. On 25 March 2026 the government chose a South East Hampshire unitary council to replace Havant, Fareham, Gosport and Portsmouth from April 2028, with boundary changes at Newlands, Clanfield, Horndean and Rowlands Castle. It withdrew that decision on 7 September 2026, citing updated legal advice, and a review is now under way. Havant Borough Council stays in charge of planning here, and the May 2027 elections go ahead on today's boundaries.

Now, During Examination, and After

1. Now to submission. Applications are decided against the 2011 Core Strategy, the emerging plan's direction and national policy, with a supply well under five years.
2. During examination. The new plan gains weight as it progresses, which helps land that fits its strategy and asks more of land that does not.
3. After that. Who takes the next plan forward depends on the outcome of the government's review of reorganisation.

A site that already sits well against the built-up edge need not wait for any of these. Land that depends on a future allocation is best kept in front of the council through its ongoing call for sites. How it works explains how we handle each route.