Selling Land in Dover District

• Fields and paddocks that adjoin the boundary of Deal, Sandwich, Aylesham or Dover.
• Land beside a local centre such as Ash, Eastry, Wingham, Shepherdswell or Kingsdown, at a scale that suits the village.
• Edge-of-village land at one of the larger villages, including Capel-le-Ferne, Preston, Worth or Guston.
• Yards, former farm complexes and other previously developed land inside the towns.
• Land next to Whitfield or an allocated site that could share its access or open space.
• Larger holdings that could be put forward for the plan review.

Where your land fits, we pay for the surveys and planning work under an option whose price is fixed at the outset, above the land's present value. You keep farming or using it meanwhile, and should permission not come, the land stays yours with nothing owed. The how it works page sets out each stage.

• 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 council's housing land supply assessment for 2025 to 2030, counting forward from 1 April 2025, uses the 611 homes a year in the adopted plan. It explains why: the plan was adopted within the last five years and its strategic policies are not out of date, so the requirement does not need revisiting. The calculation runs like this:

The assessment's summary gives 3,745 homes while its detailed table adds up to 3,748. Both round to 5.8 years, and either way the supply clears the requirement by roughly 540 homes.

What a Supply Above Five Years Means Here

Policy S5 of the August 2026 framework supports homes beyond a settlement's limits where unmet housing need is evidenced and the land is well related to the settlement, with roads, schools and drainage that can cope. A delivery result below 75% means that need is treated as evidenced; a supply short of five years is evidence to be weighed, not an automatic finding. Dover shows neither today, so a large field the plan did not choose would struggle. The adopted plan, though, has its own route for smaller sites on settlement edges.

The urban expansion at Whitfield is the district's long-running growth area. The 2024 plan says at least a further 2,200 homes can be built there over the plan period, on top of 1,483 already consented, of which 478 had been built when the plan was prepared. The monitoring report records 115 homes finished at Whitfield in 2024/25, and the supply assessment expects 525 more by 2030.

Why Two Totals Are Quoted for Whitfield

The council's 2025 supply assessment gives both figures. It records that Whitfield was first allocated in the 2010 Core Strategy for 5,750 homes, and that the 2024 plan now allocates it for 6,350 homes in total. The larger figure is the current one. For a landowner the gap changes little: Whitfield will be building for many years, and its roads and bus link shape what is possible on neighbouring land.

In April 2025, the planning committee approved two outline schemes totalling 739 homes: 309 north west of Archers Court Road and 430 south of Church Whitfield Road, with section 106 contributions that include money for the Fastrack bus link.

The Other Allocations

• Dover town, with Guston and Temple Ewell, about 1,083 homes.
• Aylesham, about 649, including the land to the south of the village.
• Eythorne and Elvington, about 355 between them.
• Sandwich, about 282, and Deal with Walmer, Sholden and Great Mongeham, about 263.
• The local centres, from 196 at Ash and 103 at Wingham down to 55 at Kingsdown.
• The former Snowdown Colliery, which policy HRS2 treats as a heritage regeneration opportunity site.

These are the plan's indicative totals by settlement. Aylesham's is already building: 152 of the 154 homes completed there in 2024/25 were on allocated land.

The adopted plan says the council intends to formally review it within five years of adoption, which points to October 2029 at the latest. We have not found a published timetable for the review on the council's planning pages. Land that is too large for SP4 is best readied for the review, and our guide to plan reviews and calls for sites shows where site evidence counts most.

The Plan's Own Yardstick Until It Turns Five, and an East Kent Council on Hold

Once the plan passes its fifth anniversary, national policy normally replaces the plan's 611 homes a year with the government's standard method when supply is tested. A Kent County Council paper on reorganisation lists Dover's figure under the December 2024 method as 789 homes a year, and the method is recalculated as new data appears. Today's 3,748 homes would not cover five years at that rate, so the current margin depends on the plan's age as much as on building.

The delivery result is refreshed annually; the current one, from the Housing Delivery Test 2025, was published on 17 August 2026. At 108%, the district faces none of the test's sanctions. Slipping under 95% means preparing an action plan; under 85%, the supply sums take on a 20% buffer; and under 75%, unmet need is treated as shown for the purposes of policy S5. The 2025/26 completions, due in the council's next monitoring report, will be the first new year counted.

Reorganisation is on hold. In July 2026 the government decided that Dover would join Canterbury and Thanet in an east Kent unitary council from April 2028. In September 2026 the Secretary of State paused Kent and Medway's reorganisation to review those July decisions, and the government has confirmed that May 2027 local elections will go ahead on existing council boundaries. The district council says the shape of any new councils will not be confirmed until the review ends. Until then, it remains the planning authority and its 2024 plan stays in force.

Practical Timing

• Edge-of-settlement land that suits SP4 can be looked at now, since it relies on the adopted plan rather than on the housing numbers.
• Larger fields are better prepared for the review, with evidence gathered before the council sets out its options.
• Not sure which applies? Our free desktop review answers that first.