Selling Land in Harborough

• Fields on the edge of Kibworth, Fleckney, Broughton Astley or Great Glen, outside the Areas of Separation.
• Land beside Husbands Bosworth, Ullesthorpe, Billesdon, Houghton on the Hill or Great Bowden that suits a modest scheme.
• Sites around Market Harborough and Lutterworth that sit against existing homes and have a road frontage.
• Yards, former commercial sites and other previously developed land in or beside a village.
• Farmland holdings large enough to offer the council growth when this plan is next reviewed.

Land in a green wedge or an Area of Separation carries a higher bar, and we will say so after our review. Where we go ahead, the price is agreed at the start and set above the land's value today. We fund and run every part of the planning work, you keep farming or using the land until completion, and should permission not come, you still own the land and pay us nothing.

• 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 2019 plan asks for 557 homes a year. Once its strategic policies passed their fifth anniversary on 30 April 2024, national policy replaced that figure with the government's standard method for testing supply. When the standard method was revised in December 2024, it gave the district 723 homes a year, as the council's housing numbers topic paper records, some 30% above the plan's 557, and the council's monitoring report notes that it published an updated supply position the following month, in January 2025.

The full statement for 2024/25 then worked the position through again, using a need figure of 735 homes a year from the newer data. The October 2025 statement sets it out like this:

The shortfall is roughly 1,450 homes. It is not a sign of slow building: the council's housing numbers topic paper records 4,214 homes completed between April 2020 and March 2025, an average of 843 a year, although 2024/25 fell back to 491. The two need figures you may see come from the same method at different dates: the topic paper gives 723 as the figure when the December 2024 framework was published, while the supply statement uses the later calculation of 735. Either leaves the district well under five years.

For an owner selling land on the edge of Market Harborough or Lutterworth, a gap of roughly 1,450 homes is the shortfall an application can point to now, while the 2019 plan still sets the yardstick.

What the Shortfall Does for Land Beyond a Village Edge

Policy S5 of the national framework, as revised in August 2026, counts a supply below five years as evidence that housing need is not being met, and that gives a route for homes outside settlement limits. It is evidence to be weighed, not an automatic approval. The land has to relate well to the town or village beside it and be served by roads, schools and drainage with the capacity to cope. S5 is switched off only in the Green Belt, and Harborough has none: the submitted plan notes that Leicester has no Green Belt and protects the city edge with two green wedges instead, alongside four Areas of Separation elsewhere in the district. Inside a settlement's built-up area, policy S4 takes over instead, which starts from yes and keeps refusal for harm that would substantially exceed a scheme's benefits. Our guide to the 2026 NPPF sets out both tests in full.

More than a third of the homes on new allocations sit on the edge of Leicester. The largest, land south of Gartree Road (policy SA02), is planned as a new neighbourhood of about 4,000 homes that straddles the boundary with Oadby and Wigston, with 1,200 of them allocated in Harborough's plan. Scraptoft takes 1,125 more, and Thurnby and Bushby 125. Two green wedges, between Leicester, Scraptoft and Bushby and between Thurnby, Leicester and Oadby, keep open land between these new neighbourhoods and the city.

The reason growth leans towards the city is Leicester's own shortfall. Harborough's 123 homes a year comes from the 2022 agreement between the Leicester and Leicestershire councils. After the standard method changed, the councils signed a fresh statement in December 2025 for plans made under the new rules, which gives Harborough a need of 735 homes a year plus 62 a year for the city, 797 in all. The same statement confirms that plans already past their final consultation by March 2025, like this one, keep the 2022 figures.

The Edge of the District and the Paused Reorganisation

If it goes ahead, the government's decision of July 2026 would move eight Harborough parishes into a new council centred on Leicester from April 2028: Great Glen, Little Stretton, Newton Harcourt, Scraptoft, Stoughton, Thurnby and Bushby, Willoughby Waterleys and Wistow. The council's leader called it "a slap in the face for the people of Harborough" and said the council was considering every option, including legal challenge. The government put that decision on hold for a review on 7 September 2026, leaving the May 2027 council elections to run on today's boundaries. On 21 September 2026 Harborough and four other Leicestershire district councils sent the government a pre-action letter, the first formal step towards a legal challenge, pointing to the government's own consultation, in which only 7% of respondents took a positive view of the city council's proposal. For now, Harborough decides applications across the whole district, including the Gartree Road and Scraptoft land.

Stage 2 Hearings, 10 November to 4 December

The inspectors' draft timetable opens on the morning of 10 November with procedural matters and the plan's vision, and turns to the amount and distribution of development that afternoon. The Leicester Urban Area is heard on the afternoon of 24 November, and the market towns, large and medium villages and Magna Park on 25 November. Strategic housing policies follow on 1 December, with a session on next steps on 4 December. What the inspectors say about site numbers in these sessions is the first real sign of how the plan will end up.

Adoption, and What It Would Do to the Supply

The council's Local Development Scheme gave December 2026 or January 2027 for adoption, marked as indicative and dependent on the examination. With hearings now running to 4 December and any main modifications still to be consulted on before the inspectors report, that date looks optimistic, but the order of events is fixed. Once the plan is adopted, supply would normally be measured against the new plan's 657 a year rather than 735, and the topic paper expects completions, permissions and new allocations to "restore and exceed the five-year requirement from 2026-2027". The inspectors put the plan's requirement at 87% of the newer need figure, above the 80% line below which national policy, for decisions since 1 July 2026, adds a 20% buffer to plans examined under a framework older than December 2024. We do not predict it, but if that happens the case for unallocated land outside the plan becomes much harder. The months before adoption are when the shortfall carries its full weight.

Until then, the old measure applies. The statement for 2024/25 came out at the end of October 2025, and as of late September 2026 the council's monitoring page listed no statement based at April 2026. When it comes, it will count another year of building and the permissions granted since, and it may be the last one measured against the standard method before the new plan takes over.

The delivery test is renewed each year; its current edition, the Housing Delivery Test 2025, was published on 17 August 2026. At 139%, a drop below 95% would require an action plan and a drop below 85% would add a 20% buffer to the supply calculation, neither of which looks close. The supply position, not the delivery test, is what moves applications in Harborough.

For an owner, the order of work follows from that:

• Land that sits well against a village or town can be reviewed for an application now, while the shortfall still counts.
• Larger holdings or land in a green wedge are better aimed at the next review of the plan, with evidence built up in the meantime.
• Unsure which applies? Our free review answers that first, and our how it works page shows what follows.