Selling Land in Folkestone and Hythe

• Fields on the edges of Hythe, Hawkinge, Folkestone and New Romney that sit against existing homes.
• Land around the larger villages, such as Lyminge, Sellindge and Dymchurch, with a safe road access.
• Sites mostly in Flood Zone 1, including the higher ground at the edges of the Marsh settlements.
• Yards, depots, former commercial sites and other previously developed land inside or next to the towns.
• Land within an easy walk of shops, schools or a station.

Land inside the Kent Downs or deep in the Marsh is not automatically ruled out, but we will say plainly if the constraints are likely to be too great.

• 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 own figures explain the score. Between 2019/20 and 2023/24 the district completed 2,224 homes against a requirement of 3,110, and the adopted plan steps the annual target up to 885 homes from 2024/25, roughly double the recent average of around 440 a year. Dropping below 75% brings policy S5 of the National Planning Policy Framework into play, supporting homes beyond a settlement boundary where the field is physically well related to the town or village and local roads, schools and drainage can cope.

Nothing here is Green Belt, so no line on the map switches S5 off. The limits come from the Kent Downs, the Marsh and the Sellindge catchment instead, and the action plan reckons only around 2% of the district is potentially developable land that is not already allocated. Each field has to answer four questions:

1. Is the land physically well related to a settlement? A field against the edge of Hythe, Hawkinge, Sellindge or New Romney starts far ahead of one alone in open country.
2. Is it outside the Kent Downs? Land inside the National Landscape faces a much higher bar, and land near its edge is judged on views from the hills.
3. Is it on the drier ground? On Romney Marsh especially, a site mostly in Flood Zone 1 is a very different proposition from one largely in Flood Zone 3.
4. Does it drain to Sellindge? Land served by the Sellindge wastewater works must deal with nutrient neutrality.

For the exact wording of S4 and S5, see our guide to the 2026 changes to national planning policy.

Stodmarsh is protected as a Special Protection Area, a Ramsar site, a Special Area of Conservation and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and new homes that drain into the Stour catchments must show they will not add to nutrient pollution there. In Folkestone and Hythe the council says the effect is limited to the northern part of the district, and only to development served by the Sellindge wastewater treatment works.

So most of Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh is outside the requirement, while land draining to the Sellindge works needs a nutrient solution before permission. The rules apply to any development that adds homes, and also to student accommodation, tourist accommodation and tourist attractions.

Nutrient neutrality is a cost and a piece of technical work, not a veto, met by credits or by wetland or other mitigation on a larger site. Sellindge itself shows it can be done: the action plan records that the first phase of the village's allocation has been resolved for approval and that 162 homes have been granted on the second.

For an owner selling land around Sellindge or elsewhere in the north of the district, the first question is which treatment works the homes would drain to, since that alone decides whether the requirement applies.

On 7 September 2026 the council announced that work had begun on a new plan, the Local Plan 2045, with a six week scoping consultation running until 4pm on Friday 16 October 2026. What it hears will shape the draft plan, and further consultation is expected in 2027.

Two calls for sites, the second closing on 24 April 2025, have fed the council's land availability assessment, which it expects to publish in September to October 2027. Its call for sites page now says it cannot assess new sites at this stage, though it keeps later submissions to review in due course, so the draft plan will start from land it already knows about.

1. Autumn 2026. While scoping runs, we assess your land and tell you whether we think it has a case.
2. Towards the draft plan. Where land is already in the assessment, we prepare the evidence the council asks for. Where it is not, we lodge it for later review and make its case at each consultation.
3. In parallel. The council's latest monitoring report put its housing land supply at 3.1 years from 1 April 2024, measured against 885 homes a year plus the past shortfall and a 20% buffer, well short of the five years national policy expects. Where the case is strong, we can apply now rather than wait for the 2045 plan.

Our explainer on local plans and site submissions follows a site through every one of these stages.