Selling Land in St Albans

• Fields beside St Albans, Harpenden or London Colney that are not already part of an allocation.
• Land around Chiswell Green, How Wood, Park Street, Bricket Wood, Redbourn or Wheathampstead where roads and housing already enclose it.
• Sites within walking distance of a Thameslink station or an Abbey Line stop.
• Yards, depots, glasshouse sites with lawful commercial use and other previously developed land.
• Larger holdings that could be put forward for the next plan against the higher need figure.

Land in open country between the city and Harpenden, or in a river floodplain, faces a steeper climb, and we say so plainly. You can read how a partnership with us is structured on our option agreements guide.

• 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 plan provides for 15,045 homes between April 2024 and March 2041, an average of 885 a year. It is stepped: 3,795 homes are expected in the first seven years to 2031, 6,050 in the five years after that and 5,200 in the final five. About 30% of the growth is directed to Hemel Garden Communities on the district's western edge, with further strategic sites around St Albans, Harpenden, Redbourn and London Colney.

These sites went through years of assessment and two stages of hearings, so for them the question of principle is settled. In June 2026 the council also adopted two supplementary planning documents for Hemel Garden Communities, one on its framework and one on stewardship and placemaking. For most landowners, then, the interest lies less in the allocations themselves than in what the plan leaves unresolved.

For an owner whose field beside St Albans, Harpenden or London Colney was not allocated, that is the opening: the adopted figure already sits below the government's newer one, so the next plan has to look at land again.

The adopted plan places every settlement in one of seven tiers, and the tier tells you a lot about the planning starting point for land in or around it.

• Towns and larger villages. St Albans and Hemel Hempstead sit at the top, then Harpenden, London Colney, the large villages of Redbourn and Wheathampstead, and the medium-sized villages of Bricket Wood, Chiswell Green, How Wood and Park Street. The plan describes none of these as washed over by the Green Belt. Within them, policy S4 applies, so a proposal starts from a presumption of approval that only substantial harm can displace.
• Green Belt villages and hamlets. The sixth tier, Sandridge, Colney Heath, the Lea Valley Estate, Smallford, Sleapshyde and Gustard Wood, is described in the plan as washed over by the Green Belt, as are the hamlets of the seventh. Limited infilling is allowed in villages under Green Belt policy, and land around them can be tested as grey belt.
• Open countryside. Almost all of it is Green Belt, where policy S5 has no role, so the 46% result helps mainly by adding weight to the need test within the grey belt assessment.

The medium-sized villages are served by bus routes and the Abbey Line, and the countryside around them is broken up by roads, housing and the railway. Fragmented land does not automatically qualify as grey belt, but in our experience it is where the question most often has a real answer. Our grey belt guide sets out how the test is applied.

Adopting a plan does not reset the Housing Delivery Test. It is published every year (the figures here come from the Housing Delivery Test 2025, released on 17 August 2026), and each edition looks back over three years of building. The next one will still be measuring years before this plan existed, so the unmet need status that comes with a result below 75% continues until a later result rises above that line.

Supply is where adoption makes more of a difference. The council's last statement, from a base date of 1 April 2025, found 1.12 years of deliverable land. With no up to date plan, it had to measure against the government's standard method, 1,668 homes a year, plus a 20% buffer for past under delivery, and it could count 2,243 homes against a five-year requirement of 10,010. The adopted plan changes the yardstick. Its requirement is stepped, and the inspectors' report records that the step for the first five years after adoption was raised to 615 homes a year, rising to 1,210 a year in years six to ten. A five-year supply is normally measured against the steps that apply over those five years. The 20% buffer stays, both because of the 46% result and under a national rule applied to decisions since 1 July 2026, which catches a plan under five years old that was tested against a pre-December 2024 framework and plans for no more than 80% of standard method need, as 885 a year does against 1,668. Even so, 615 a year with that buffer comes to 3,690 homes over five years, against 10,010 before adoption, so a five-year supply becomes far easier to show and the case for unallocated land will lean more on the delivery result, the grey belt test and the next plan.

Two timetables were set to run side by side. The council has said the first step on its next plan is to publish a timetable with key dates. The government's decision of 16 July 2026 provided for elections to new councils in May 2027 and a handover on 1 April 2028, which would have passed most of that work to a shadow council for North West Hertfordshire. It was paused on 7 September 2026 pending a review, and voters in May 2027 will elect councillors to the existing council, so for the present the new plan is a matter for St Albans alone.

For a landowner, the timetable, when it appears, is the document to read first, because it will show when a call for sites opens and when draft allocations are expected. The next plan must look far beyond the sites chosen this time to meet the higher need figure, and a complete submission, with access, drainage and Green Belt evidence already done, is far easier for a council to test against it. We prepare that evidence at our own cost.