Selling Land in Hinckley and Bosworth

The delivery test and the supply statement measure different things, which is why they point in different directions. The test compares homes built over three years with the requirement for those years, and the three years it covered, April 2022 to March 2025, include an exceptional year. The council's Residential Land Availability report for 2024/25 records these net completions:

The three years in the test window, 2022/23 to 2024/25, add up to fewer homes than the 1,832 counted in the delivery test. The likeliest reason is that the test uses the government's national net additional dwellings figures rather than the council's own site monitoring, and the two are compiled differently. Either way, the direction is the same. The two most recent years sit a little below the Core Strategy's 450 a year and well below the 747 a year the supply statement now uses. The report adds that 290 of the 311 homes completed on major sites in 2024/25 were on greenfield land, and that 58 affordable homes were finished that year. The borough depends on greenfield sites coming through, and the new yardstick asks for more of them, sooner. Past building keeps the council clear of the test's penalties, but it cannot close a five-year gap measured forwards.

Where a village sits in the settlement hierarchy decides how much growth it is expected to take, and whether an edge-of-village site reads as sustainable. The published plan adopts the four tiers set out in the council's settlement hierarchy review:

Three changes from the Core Strategy stand out. The three kinds of key rural centre it used, those relating to Leicester, those in the National Forest and stand-alone ones, become a single tier. Bagworth and Thornton drop from key rural centre to rural village. Kirkby Mallory moves up from hamlet to village because of its general store, village hall, church, café and restaurant.

Small Sites Beside Village Boundaries

The published plan also sets out a route for small sites. As drafted, policy PS24 supports, in principle, small housing schemes on sites of no more than one hectare immediately adjacent to the settlement boundary of a key rural centre or rural village, where the site reads as a logical extension of the built form: nine homes or fewer at a key rural centre, and five or fewer at a rural village. The scheme must suit the settlement's size and role, be well designed, fit the character of the area and have safe walking and cycling links to the village's services. The council will watch whether such schemes add up to more than 5% of a settlement, which it describes as a monitoring tool rather than a cap, and cumulative growth weighs more heavily as that point nears. For the owner of a paddock or small field on a village edge, this is the policy to read first.

Designations to Check First

• Green wedges (policy NE06): the Hinckley, Barwell, Earl Shilton and Burbage wedge and the Rothley Brook Meadow wedge, which keep settlements apart and are drawn on the policies map.
• The National Forest and Charnwood Forest (policy NE07), which reach into the north of the borough.
• Heritage (policy HC01), including Bosworth Battlefield, which the plan treats as a designated heritage asset of national importance.
• Flood risk and drainage (policies ER06 and ER07), which decide how much of a field with a wet corner can be built on.

For small rural schemes the plan keeps a route for homes that meet a village's own need, under policy HH09 on rural needs housing, and the farmland page sets out what makes a field worth a closer look.

What a Scheme Here Carries

Policy HH02 asks for affordable housing wherever a scheme reaches ten homes or a site covers 0.5 hectares, at a share set by value zone: 30% on greenfield land in the higher value zone, 20% in the medium zone and 10% in the low zone, and 10% on brownfield land in every zone, with 80% of it for rent. In designated rural areas, schemes of five to nine homes pay a contribution instead, unless homes are provided on site. We allow for all of it, and for the other costs a scheme carries, before we agree a price.

The Plan Timetable

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.

The Next Supply Statement

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.

The Next Delivery Test

The Housing Delivery Test 2025 came out on 17 August 2026, and the government publishes a new edition 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, 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.

What This Means for Timing

• 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.