Selling Land in Ashford

• Fields of 2 acres or more against the edge of Ashford, including around Kingsnorth, Kennington and Willesborough.
• Land beside Tenterden, Charing, Hamstreet, Woodchurch or Biddenden that reads as part of the village rather than open country.
• Sites with a road frontage, or an access that could realistically be formed.
• Former yards, farm buildings and commercial plots on a settlement edge.
• Larger holdings that could suit the new Local Plan, or host nutrient or biodiversity work alongside homes.

Land deep in the Kent Downs or High Weald is harder, and we say so plainly.

• 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.

Under the August 2026 National Planning Policy Framework, a council scoring below 75% in the Housing Delivery Test is automatically treated as having unmet housing need, which opens policy S5 for land beyond a settlement boundary. Ashford's 75% result keeps it out of that group. What it does do is raise the buffer the council must add to its supply from 5% to 20%, because the result is under 85%.

That buffer helps explain the thin supply. The August 2026 statement takes 986 homes a year for five years, adds 20%, and sets the total against 3,746 deliverable homes. The answer is 3.16 years, leaving a gap of more than 2,000 homes. National policy allows a shortfall of that kind to be used as evidence of unmet need under S5, so the route is open in Ashford even though the delivery score alone would not open it.

S5 still asks a lot. The land must be physically well related to a town or village and servable by existing or planned infrastructure, and landscape and flood policies still apply. Inside a settlement, policy S4 is simpler: approval unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits. Our guide to what the 2026 framework means for landowners sets out both policies.

How We Build an Ashford Case

1. Relate the site to the settlement. How the land meets the existing edge, the walk to shops and schools, and a safe access.
2. Use the council's own numbers. Its August 2026 statement is the strongest evidence of unmet need an application here can carry.
3. Settle the nutrient route early. In the Stour catchment, we fix how the scheme will be nutrient neutral before applying.
4. Show the homes can come quickly. An argument built on a five-year shortfall is stronger when the site can help close it.

For an owner selling a field on the edge of Ashford, Tenterden or a larger village, it is that gap of more than 2,000 homes, not the delivery score, that gives an application its weight.

Since 2020, new homes and other overnight accommodation in the affected part of the Stour catchment have needed to show they will not add nitrogen or phosphorus to the Stodmarsh lakes. Ashford's statement says about 24% of its supply has mitigation secured and a further 40% relies on nutrient credits, which it assumes will let those sites deliver from the third year.

Credits can now be bought. The council lists three providers with approved strategic assessments in the catchment:

• Stour Environmental Credits, whose first tranche comes from upgrading septic tanks.
• DACE Environmental, with schemes at Bliby and two fallowing projects, where farmland is taken out of cropping.
• Savills, with a greenspace creation scheme at Hinxhill.

An application needs a nutrient credit certificate from an approved provider, and the council may restrict occupation of the homes until the mitigation is working. Alongside this market, Kent County Council launched a £9.8 million Kent Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund on 23 July 2026 for wetlands, ditch improvements and treatment works that will create more credits.

For you this is a cost and a sequence, not a verdict. We budget for mitigation from the start, and the price we agree already allows for it. As the fallowing schemes show, farmland can itself be part of the answer, and our farmland page explains how we look at larger holdings.

The government publishes the Housing Delivery Test once a year. The latest, the Housing Delivery Test 2025, issued on 17 August 2026, covers April 2022 to March 2025. The next edition moves the three-year window on, so 2022/23 drops out and 2025/26 comes in. In the council's table the year leaving recorded 1,004 homes and the year arriving 143. The requirement is recalculated too, so we do not guess the result, but that swap is the thing to watch.

If a future result falls below 75%, S5 would treat Ashford as having unmet need automatically, and with no Green Belt that would reach every town and village edge. A result of 85% or more would cut the buffer to 5% and lift the land supply figure on the same sites.

The Supply, a Restarted 2043 Plan and a Paused Council Change

The council says it must publish a statement of its deliverable supply every year. The current one runs from 1 April 2026, so the next should look forward a year later and will show whether the nutrient credits and the Kent fund have started to move the stalled sites.

The plan itself has started again. In June 2026 the council restarted its new plan under the plan-making system introduced in March 2026, because work on the Ashford Local Plan 2042 could not be carried across. Responses to the 2025 consultation remain background only. The council's timetable shows:

• A scoping consultation from 2 to 23 September 2026, now closed.
• A self assessment at the first gateway on 30 October 2026.
• Consultation on the proposed content and evidence from 23 November 2026 to 11 January 2027.
• Consultation on the proposed plan from 17 May to 12 July 2027.
• Submission for examination on 1 November 2027, and adoption on 31 March 2028.

On 16 July 2026 ministers chose a pattern of four unitary councils for Kent and Medway, due to start in April 2028, with Ashford in the middle council alongside Swale and Folkestone and Hythe. Less than two months later, on 7 September, the government paused the whole change for a review. The May 2027 elections will go ahead on existing boundaries, and Ashford Borough Council remains the planning authority, so for now the plan timetable above is the one that counts.

Apply on the Shortfall, and Put the Land to the 2043 Plan

Two routes can run side by side. A well related site can go forward by application now, resting on the council's own shortfall, while the same land is put to the council for the 2043 plan, where the next formal consultation, on proposed content and evidence, opens in November. Neither comes with a guaranteed date, and we will say which we would lead with once we have looked at your land. The plan-making stages are laid out in our call for sites guide.