Selling Land in Charnwood

• Fields that adjoin the Limits to Development of Loughborough, Shepshed, Syston, Birstall or Thurmaston.
• Edges of the service centres the plan already expects to grow, such as Barrow upon Soar, Anstey and Sileby, and of the smaller Soar and Wreake valley villages.
• Land within a reasonable walk of a railway station or a good bus route.
• Holdings that can share or add to new school and road capacity.
• Yards, former commercial sites and other previously developed land, anywhere in the borough.
• Farmland with a road frontage, or a realistic way to get one, on the edge of a settlement.

Land deep inside Charnwood Forest, in a Green Wedge or in the middle of an Area of Local Separation carries a higher bar, and we will say so plainly once we have looked. Where we go ahead, we agree the price at the start, cover the full cost of the planning work and put money towards the fees of your own solicitor and land agent, so having it done properly does not cost you anything.

• 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 Housing Delivery Test looks back over three monitoring years, all of which came before the new plan was adopted. Its result still counts. Any score below 75% is taken, under policy S5 of the national framework as revised in August 2026, as evidence that the borough is short of homes, and that opens a route to approval for housing outside settlement limits. That route is switched off only in the Green Belt, so here it reaches every settlement edge.

The adopted plan pulls the other way. It says new built development will be confined to sites allocated in the plan and in neighbourhood plans, and other land within the Limits to Development, subject to specific exceptions, with policy C1 covering the countryside. The inspectors also found that the plan provides for at least 21,216 homes against its requirement of 19,024, which they called "a reasonably comfortable 11.5% margin". A council with that margin and a plan only months old will argue that its allocations are the right answer. The S5 route therefore works best for land that fits the plan's own logic. These are the questions we test, in order:

1. Does the land sit tight against a settlement? Land that adjoins the Limits to Development of Loughborough, Shepshed, a Leicester fringe settlement or a service centre is in a far better position than one separated by open countryside.
2. Can infrastructure cope? The plan comes with £350 million of developer contributions for roads, public transport, cycle routes, education, health and community facilities, including six new primary schools at Anstey (two), Barrow, Loughborough, Shepshed and Syston. Land that can use that capacity, or add to it, answers one of the council's first objections.
3. Is there a local designation? Green Wedges (policy EV2), Areas of Local Separation (EV3) and Charnwood Forest (EV4) each carry their own policy, and land inside them faces a harder case.
4. Is the land in the flood plain? The plan records 2,758 properties at risk of flooding from watercourses in a 1 in 100 year event, so this often decides how much of a field can be built on.

A site that passes each of these can make a strong case now, and the same evidence serves the plan's five-yearly review. Our guide to the 2026 NPPF covers the S5 tests in more depth.

A Comfortable Plan Total, a Short Five-Year Supply

The plan-wide margin is not the same thing as the five-year test. The council's own five year supply statement, updated in August 2026, finds 3.56 years of deliverable land at 1 April 2026. It measures against the new plan's 1,189 homes a year, but it must also make up every home not built since the plan period began in 2021, and it adds a 20% buffer because of the delivery result:

The backlog is what pulls the figure down. The statement records 498 homes completed in 2025/26, well under half the yearly requirement, so the shortfall carried forward grew again. For a landowner this is a second, independent strand of evidence of unmet need under policy S5, weighed alongside the delivery result but not resting on it.

Leicester cannot fit all of its housing within its own boundary. The inspectors recorded that the Leicester and Leicestershire statement of common ground of June 2022 set a working assumption of 18,700 homes of unmet need for the city, shared among the surrounding districts. Charnwood's part is 78 homes a year, 1,248 over the plan period, added to its own requirement.

The larger change was due in 2028. Under the government's decision announced in July 2026, two unitary councils would replace the current ten from April 2028. Syston, Birstall, Thurmaston and Anstey would be served by the new council covering Leicester, Oadby and Wigston, which would also take in parts of Blaby and Harborough, and the rest of Charnwood by the new Leicestershire and Rutland council. If that goes ahead, land on the fringe would in time be planned by a council centred on the city.

That decision was paused for review on 7 September 2026, and the May 2027 elections will be fought on the existing boundaries. The council says all its services are continuing as usual, so Charnwood decides applications across the whole borough, with no firm date for any handover.

For an owner selling land around Syston, Birstall, Thurmaston or Anstey today, the paused decision changes nothing: Charnwood's adopted plan, with its 78 homes a year for Leicester, still applies.

A delivery test that looks backwards will lag behind a plan this new. The Housing Delivery Test 2025, published on 17 August 2026, covered April 2022 to March 2025. Its successor, due in the government's usual yearly cycle, adds the year to March 2026, and all but the last few weeks of that year came before the plan was adopted.

What a change would mean is clear enough. Below 75%, the delivery result on its own keeps the unmet need route in policy S5 open across the borough. A result of 75% or more would remove that trigger, but not the route itself while the supply stays under five years, and anything under 85% would keep the 20% buffer in the supply calculation. Nobody can say which way the next figure will fall, and we do not guess.

The plan itself will not move for some time. The inspectors pointed to the national requirement for a review every five years, which from a January 2026 adoption means January 2031 at the latest, and any call for sites for the next plan would come with that review.

The council map is less settled. With work on the July decision paused during the government's review, nobody can yet say whether the review of this plan will fall to one council or two.

For an owner, that points two ways. Land that already fits the settlement pattern can be tested through an application now, while the S5 route is open. Land that needs the plan to change is best prepared well before the review begins, so its evidence is ready when the council asks.