Selling Land in Hinckley and Bosworth

• Fields that adjoin the built edge of Hinckley, Burbage, Barwell or Earl Shilton, outside the green wedges.
• Edges of the key rural centres, such as Desford, Groby, Ratby, Markfield, Newbold Verdon, Barlestone and Stoke Golding.
• Paddocks beside Market Bosworth and the other key rural centres, clear of the battlefield.
• Yards, former commercial premises and other previously developed land in any settlement.
• Land with a road frontage, or a realistic way to get one, and mostly in Flood Zone 1.
• Larger holdings that could suit the plan's review or an extension to an allocated site.

Land inside a green wedge or around a rural hamlet faces a harder test, and we will tell you plainly if that applies. If we take your land on, we fix the price on day one, meet the full planning bill ourselves, and put money towards the fees of the solicitor and land agent you choose, so doing things properly costs you 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.

Because the housing policies of the Core Strategy are more than five years old, the council no longer tests its supply against the 450 homes a year the Core Strategy set. It uses local housing need instead. The adopted version of its five-year supply statement for 2026 to 2031 starts from the standard method figure of 663 homes a year and adds the borough's share of Leicester's unmet need, which is small before 2036 and 91 homes a year after it. That gives 679 homes a year to 2036 and 754 a year after, an average of 711 across 2024 to 2045.

The gap between 3,735 and 3,347 is 388 homes. The buffer is only 5% because the council passes the delivery test comfortably; a 20% buffer applies only after significant under-delivery. The statement is also cautious about windfalls. It counts them only in the last two years, at 93 a year, the average completed on small unplanned sites since April 2013, so that they are not counted twice with sites that already have permission. The figures in the table are the ones to rely on: a few sentences elsewhere in the statement, such as a reference to a "surplus" of homes, do not match its own tables.

What a Supply Under Five Years Does for Land Beyond a Settlement

Policy S5 of the national framework, as revised in August 2026, supports new homes past a settlement's edge where there is evidence that housing need is not being met, and a supply below five years is one form of that evidence. It is a matter of weight, not an automatic yes. A field has to read as a natural part of the settlement next to it, and the roads, school places and drainage nearby need room for the new households. Within the settlement boundaries of Hinckley, Burbage and the villages, policy S4 takes over; it leans towards permission, and a council can refuse only where the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits.

This is not new ground for the borough. In an appeal reported in May 2021, when the council could show only around 4.6 years, an inspector allowed up to 55 homes on Wykin Lane, Stoke Golding, accepting moderate harm to the countryside in light of the shortfall. Our guide to the 2026 National Planning Policy Framework explains how that balance is now struck.

For an owner selling land beside a village such as Stoke Golding, that decision shows how a shortfall has tipped the balance here before.

Policy PS04 of the Regulation 19 plan makes provision for at least 15,687 homes from 2024 to 2045, or 747 a year, a figure that already includes a 5% buffer and a contribution to Leicester's unmet need. Table 5 of the plan sets out the arithmetic. Homes completed and with permission account for 2,655, a small sites windfall allowance for 1,488 (93 a year from 2029) and neighbourhood plan sites without permission for 57, 4,200 in all, which leaves 11,487 to come from new allocations. The plan allocates land for 14,208 homes, of which 11,692 are expected before 2045: 205 more than the residual, a small margin for sites that slip.

The Strategic Sites

The published plan treats sites of 500 homes or more as strategic and gives each of the seven a policy of its own:

Together the seven are allocated for at least 11,994 homes, 9,478 of them expected by 2045. The plan expects the Earl Shilton urban extension to start in 2027/28 and the Barwell one in 2031/32. Five of them must provide at least 20% affordable housing, and Barwell and Hinckley North at least 10%.

The council's site selection paper describes Lindley Meadows, north of the A5, as the plan's new settlement. The plan also names a Hinckley Western Link Road and a Nuneaton Parkway among its opening policies, and four strategic warehousing sites: Wapping and Harrow Farm at Hinckley, two sites at Burbage, and Cliffe Hill Farm near junction 22 of the M1 at Markfield.

Lindley Meadows in Detail

Lindley Meadows covers about 203 hectares of mostly arable farmland east of Fenny Drayton, bounded by the A5 to the south, the A444 Atherstone Road to the west, Fenn Lanes to the north and the MIRA Technology Park to the east. Policy PS08 allocates it for at least 3,000 homes, 1,604 of them by 2045, with at least 20% affordable housing, 5% of plots for self-build, primary school provision on site, a local centre and a country park, and its main access from the A5. Because only about half the homes fall within the plan period, the plan sets the site within a vision of at least 30 years. Its constraints show what the council weighs in the west of the borough: the registered Bosworth battlefield lies about 300 metres to the north east, a scheduled monument, the remains of a chapel in Lindley Park, sits inside the site, and a gas transmission main crosses it. The policy also asks for landscaped buffers to Fenny Drayton and to MIRA.

Norton Heath: In the 2025 Draft, Not Among the Strategic Sites Now

The draft consulted on in autumn 2025 proposed a different new settlement. Its schedule of proposed sites listed Norton Heath for "a minimum of 7,500 homes (circa 2,250 to be delivered in the plan period)", alongside sites such as up to 500 homes south of Desford, now allocated for at least 550, and up to 513 at Earl Shilton. The scheme behind it, near Norton Juxta Twycross, was reported by the BBC as 10,000 homes on about 700 hectares, and nearly 1,500 people signed a petition asking for more time to comment. Norton Heath has no policy in the published plan's list of strategic sites; Lindley Meadows fills that role. For owners around Twycross and Norton Juxta Twycross that is a real change: the new settlement once proposed near them no longer has a policy of its own, so land there is judged against the settlement hierarchy below.

The plan also includes policy PS18, which sets out the circumstances that would trigger an early review. They include the council failing to show five years of supply in two or more consecutive monitoring reports, a delivery test result below 75% in two or more consecutive years, clear evidence that a significant share of the allocated sites will not come forward as expected, and a change to the standard method or national policy that lifts local housing need more than 10% above the plan's requirement. That matters for land left out this time, because a review would reopen the question of where growth goes.

The council's Local Development Scheme, published in July 2026, sets out the remaining stages. It puts the delays to date down to extensive national planning reforms and to more than 700 responses at the previous stage. The plan itself says it was prepared to meet the government's requirement for submission by December 2026, so that it can benefit from transitional arrangements in national policy, and that the council judged delaying it over unresolved cross-boundary questions would not be justified.

Comments made at Regulation 19 go to the Secretary of State with the plan, and on to the inspector. A submitted plan carries more weight in decisions than a draft, and once the new allocations are adopted the council will find it easier to turn down land it did not pick. Until then, a well placed site outside the plan can still lean on the current shortfall.

Windfall Evidence to Be Updated, and Reorganisation Challenged

Supply is the measure to follow. The 4.48 years figure runs from 1 April 2026. The statement says its windfall evidence will be updated after the Regulation 19 consultation, once completions for 2025/26 have been counted. Any change in the headline will depend on those completions and on how quickly the permitted sites in its list are built.

On delivery, the Housing Delivery Test 2025 was published on 17 August 2026, and a new edition comes each year. At 134%, none of its consequences applies here: an action plan starts below 95%, a 20% buffer below 85%, and an automatic finding of unmet need below 75%. The next edition leaves out 2022/23, the strongest year in the current window. What that does to the result depends on the 2025/26 figures and the requirement used, and we do not guess at it.

Reorganisation is paused and challenged. On 7 September 2026 the government began a review of its decisions on local government reorganisation, including the plans for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. The council says nothing changes immediately, and elections in May 2027 will use existing boundaries. On 21 September it joined four other Leicestershire councils in a pre-action letter, the first step towards a legal challenge. For now the borough council prepares the plan and decides applications.

Town Edges Now, Allocation Land at Examination in 2027

• Land that sits well against a town or key rural centre can be looked at for an application now, while the supply is short and before the new plan is adopted.
• Land that depends on an allocation has its next chance at examination in 2027, or through the review the plan provides for.
• Previously developed land and plots inside settlements do not depend on the supply position at all.