Selling Land in Melton

• Paddocks and small fields adjoining a Service Centre such as Bottesford, Asfordby, Long Clawson, Waltham or Wymondham, suited to a scheme of about ten homes.
• Gaps in a built-up frontage in the Rural Hubs, such as Frisby on the Wreake, Gaddesby or Great Dalby.
• Plots, yards and underused land inside Melton Mowbray, where policy S4 applies.
• Land on the edge of Melton Mowbray outside the sustainable neighbourhoods and their Areas of Separation, with a realistic access.
• Larger farm holdings that could be put forward for the new Local Plan before its scoping stage.

Land on the Vale of Belvoir escarpment, or low-lying ground beside the Wreake and the Eye, faces a harder test, and our review will tell you honestly how hard. When we take a site on, the price is fixed on day one at a level above its current worth, and every survey, application and appeal is paid for by us. Farming or grazing carries on until completion; should planning fail, you keep the land with nothing to pay. The sequence is laid out on our how it works page.

• 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.

Melton's requirement climbs in three steps: 170 a year for 2011 to 2021, 245 a year for 2021 to 2026 and 320 a year for the final ten years to 2036. The council's five-year supply report of November 2025, based at 31 March 2025, applies that staircase to the five years ahead:

Completions explain the comfortable margin. After slow early years, including 52 homes in 2013/14, building rose to 334 in 2019/20 and has stayed above 300 every year since, reaching 398 in 2024/25. The plan's 320 step only starts in 2026/27, so the borough has been building at the later rate for some time already.

Why the Plan Figure, and Not the Government's

Once a plan is more than five years old, supply is usually tested against the government's standard method instead. National planning guidance makes one exception: the plan figure can still be used where its housing policies were reviewed within the last five years and found not to need updating. Melton relies on that exception. The statement itself says only that it treats the 2018 plan, "in the context of the Local Plan Review", as still relevant, and it does not mention the standard method at all. The reasoning sits in the council's 2023 review of the plan, which found that "the local plan targets continue to be broadly appropriate", because the standard method then gave 185 homes a year against the 170 of assessed need behind the plan.

That review came before the government changed its method in December 2024, and the figure has since roughly doubled. The Leicester and Leicestershire councils' statement of common ground of December 2025 puts Melton's need at 369 homes a year. The November 2025 statement does not revisit the 2023 finding against that number, but today the difference is academic. Five years at 369 with a 5% buffer comes to about 1,937 homes, and even with a 20% buffer about 2,214, both below the 2,426 the council counts. On any of these yardsticks Melton has more than five years of land today.

What More Than Five Years Means for a Field

In the August 2026 version of the national framework, policy S5 backs new homes beyond a settlement's edge, on land that relates well to it, once unmet need for housing is evidenced. A delivery result under 75% counts as that evidence automatically. A shortfall in the five-year supply counts too, but as a factor the decision-maker weighs rather than a finding made for it. Melton shows neither, so S5 does little for an open field here at present, and we would rather say so plainly. Several routes do not depend on a shortfall at all. Inside Melton Mowbray and the built-up parts of the villages, policy S4 applies, and a scheme should be approved unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits. Policy SS3 supports small schemes on village edges, rural exception sites for affordable homes remain open, and larger land is decided through the plan.

The adopted plan's policy SS3 supports new homes within or on the edge of the borough's existing rural settlements, where a scheme suits the size and character of the village and meets criteria covering local housing need, landscape, infrastructure, wildlife, the best farmland and drainage. The 2023 review found that the policy "has not provided a clear and consistent framework" for applicants, residents or decision-makers, and the partial update rewrites it.

The council's schedule of proposed main modifications, updated for the inspectors on 27 August 2026, sets out how the rewritten policy would read:

Within those limits, the modified policy supports two- and three-bedroom houses and accessible bungalows built to national space standards, or schemes the community backs through a neighbourhood plan, a Community Right to Build Order or a Neighbourhood Development Order. The inspectors' questions for the hearings, published on the examination page, asked whether that 10% cap is justified by the evidence, so the detail may yet move.

In practice, this is a small-sites policy. A paddock beside Long Clawson or Waltham suits a scheme of around ten well-sized family homes, not fifty. They still need care over access, drainage and design, and we take them on; see paddocks and small sites for the kind of land we mean.

With the hearings closed on 9 September 2026, the examination page says the inspectors "will now consider their position and will be in touch with the Council in due course". Main modifications would then normally go out for public comment before the inspectors report. The council's timetable pencils in adoption for July 2027. Until then the adopted SS3 applies to village applications, with the modified wording carrying growing weight as the examination advances.

The Plan's Last Step Up, Clear Delivery and a Paused Merger

The last statement, first issued in September 2025 and revised in November, was based at 31 March 2025. A statement based a year later would be the first to apply the plan's 320-a-year step to all five years, and it would add the completions of 2025/26. It is also the one to read for the yardstick: whether the council still relies on its 2023 review, or turns to the 369 a year of the December 2024 method. We do not guess at the outcome. Building has run above 300 homes a year since 2019/20.

The delivery test is a smaller matter here. A new edition of the test follows the Housing Delivery Test 2025 each year. At 190%, Melton is far from its thresholds: an action plan below 95%, a 20% buffer below 85% and unmet need treated as evidenced below 75%.

In July 2026 the government decided that Melton would join a new unitary council for the rest of Leicestershire and Rutland from April 2028, alongside a separate council for Leicester and its fringe. That decision is paused for a government review. Five other Leicestershire councils sent a pre-action letter challenging it on 21 September 2026; Melton was not among them. For now, Melton Borough Council remains the planning authority, and the body that will start the new Local Plan.

Village Sites Now, Larger Holdings Before Scoping in Late 2027

• A small site beside a village can be looked at now, with the modified SS3 wording in mind.
• Land inside Melton Mowbray or a village's built-up area can go forward under policy S4 whenever it is ready.
• A larger holding is best prepared for the new plan, with its evidence ready before scoping in late 2027.