Selling Land in Dacorum

• Fields in the Rural Area, near Tring and villages such as Long Marston and Wilstone, that sit well against the settlement.
• Green Belt fields beside Berkhamsted, Kings Langley, Bovingdon or Markyate that are enclosed enough to be grey belt.
• Land on the edges of Hemel Hempstead that is not already part of the garden communities programme.
• Yards, depots, former nurseries and other previously developed land, inside or outside the Green Belt.
• Larger holdings that could include their own natural greenspace as well as homes.
• Sites within walking distance of Hemel Hempstead's two stations or those at Berkhamsted, Tring and Kings Langley.
• Plots inside the towns and villages where policy S4 applies.

Land deep inside the Chilterns National Landscape or next to Ashridge faces a high bar, and we will say so plainly. Our how it works page explains what follows.

• 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.

Councillors approved the plan on 15 October 2024, by 25 votes to 13, and it was consulted on from 4 November to 17 December that year. Local reporting at the time put the total at 15,332 homes between 2026 and 2041, with the largest new allocations at Marshcroft in Tring (1,400 homes), Polehanger Lane in Hemel Hempstead (750), Shendish Manor in Hemel Hempstead (500) and New Mill in Tring (400).

Government inspectors held the third stage of hearings in March 2026 and wrote to the council after those sessions on 14 July 2026. The council replied on 30 July, asked on 7 September for more time to prepare the documents the letter called for, and submitted them on 17 September, among them a landscape technical report on the site east of Tring referred to as Tr03. The examination is therefore still open, and until the plan is adopted the 2013 Core Strategy, the other older documents and national policy decide applications.

If Your Land Is Not in the Submitted Plan

An examination that is still waiting on documents has not finished testing where homes should go. Land that is well evidenced can still be relevant, whether through changes at this stage, through a later review, or through an application under national policy. Around Tring and Berkhamsted that evidence usually starts with a Chilterns landscape assessment and an Ashridge zone check; around Hemel Hempstead, with access and how the land relates to the garden communities. We pay for it all. Our guide to local plans, from site submission to examination explains how examinations work.

Hemel Garden Communities is a programme run by Dacorum, St Albans City and District Council and Hertfordshire County Council with Hertfordshire Futures, the Crown Estate and other landowners. By 2050 it expects to add around 11,000 homes and up to 8,000 jobs to the north and east of the town, with 40% of the homes affordable and new neighbourhoods linked to Maylands, the town centre and the station. The Hertfordshire Innovation Quarter, with flexible office and industrial space, is part of it.

The programme crosses the boundary between the two councils. Land east of Hemel Hempstead is the subject of a cross-boundary outline application, reference 5/2025/1964, for two neighbourhoods with employment land, schools, a country park and a medical centre. St Albans is the lead planning authority, and each council assesses the part within its own area. For land nearby but outside the programme, the effect is indirect: new roads, schools and bus routes can make a field better related to the town, which matters under the unmet need route and any future plan.

Land close to the Buncefield oil terminal, on the eastern edge of the Maylands area, is a separate case. The terminal is of national importance for fuel storage and was the scene of a major explosion in December 2005, so how close a plot sits to it is one of the first things we check on that side of town.

If you own land east of Hemel Hempstead and are thinking of selling, it helps to know early whether it lies inside the programme area or beside it, as the two lead to quite different conversations.

On 15 June 2026 the government designated Dacorum Borough Council for the quality of its decisions on major development. Local reporting said more than 10% of its decisions on such applications in the two years to March 2025 had been overturned at appeal. The designation stays in force until it is revoked. While it lasts, applicants for major development, which includes schemes of 10 or more homes, can choose to apply directly to the Planning Inspectorate instead of the council.

That gives a larger scheme a second route to a decision. It does not lower the bar: the inspectorate applies the same policies and expects a complete, well evidenced application, which we prepare and pay for.