Selling Land in Oadby and Wigston

• Yards, garage courts, redundant commercial buildings and former pubs inside Oadby, Wigston and South Wigston.
• Large gardens and backland with a workable access.
• Paddocks and small sites on the edge of Wigston or Oadby, next to existing homes.
• Land beside or near the six allocations, especially around Newton Lane, Stoughton Road and Gartree Road.
• Land close to a green wedge edge, where the review has recommended a new boundary.

Much of what we look at here is brownfield land and yards, where policy S4 already leans towards approval. Wherever we take land on, we fix the price at the outset, fund every stage of the planning ourselves and contribute to your solicitor's and land agent's fees, so getting the legal side done properly costs you nothing. If permission is not secured, you keep your land and owe 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 submitted plan states that "the required level of housing growth over the Plan period (2025 to 2042) is 4,080 new homes", or 240 a year. The government's standard method gives the borough a need of 389 a year. The council's reason for the gap is transport: the plan says that at the standard method's rate "the highway network would be severely congested" and bus and car journeys would be hampered to an unacceptable degree. It proposes that the difference be taken by neighbouring councils through the Leicester and Leicestershire statement of common ground.

What the Inspectors Asked

Their initial letter of 16 July 2026 calls the gap an unmet need of "around 39%" and says it is "not apparent" that any of the national exceptions to meeting need in full apply. They also pointed out that the councils' own December 2025 statement of common ground assumes the borough's 389 a year "will be met in Oadby and Wigston in full". That statement goes further: it says it had been assumed that Oadby and Wigston "will just be able to meet its own need" but not take any of Leicester's, which is why the borough is given no share of the city's unmet need. The inspectors are waiting for a revised statement and plan a focused hearing on it.

In its updated response of 21 August, the council held its ground. It describes highway and transport limits as a "development ceiling" on growth, confirmed that the December 2024 framework applies, and formally asked the inspectors to recommend main modifications wherever they are needed. It also said that extending the plan to 2043 "would serve little practical planning purpose", because a new Leicester-based council was then expected within 18 to 20 months and would prepare a plan of its own to supersede this one. That view was set out before the government paused reorganisation in September.

The submitted plan allocates land for 3,015 homes, mostly on the outer edges of the towns:

The plan describes AP4 as a strategic allocation to be delivered in collaboration with the District of Harborough. For owners of land near the boundary, that means two councils' plans bear on the same new neighbourhood, and each council's examination can change it.

The Green Wedge Review

The borough has two green wedges: one of about 193 hectares between Oadby and Wigston, and about 70 hectares of the Oadby, Thurnby and Stoughton wedge, which runs on into Leicester and Harborough. The council's Green Wedge Review tested them against four purposes: keeping places apart, guiding the shape of growth, acting as a green lung and offering recreation. It recommended keeping 194.1 of the 263.6 hectares designated in 2019, so roughly a quarter would no longer be green wedge. Where a boundary is drawn now matters more to a landowner here than almost anywhere in the county.

The Canal and the Sence

The plan treats the Grand Union Canal as a conservation area and notes that parts of Kilby Bridge, close to the River Sence, are liable to flooding. Land in the south of the borough needs flood risk looked at first; our guide to flood risk and development land explains how the sequential test works.

The inspectors' hearing programme set Matter 1, maintaining effective co-operation, for 3 November, followed by Matter 2, housing need and requirement, running into 4 November and, if needed, 5 November, with 6 November in reserve. These sessions are the ones that test the 240 figure, the transport evidence behind it, site capacity and how fast the market can absorb new homes. What the inspectors say at the end of them is the most important signal for land in the borough while the plan is examined.

Unmet Need, Main Modifications and a March 2027 Deadline

Unmet need is the first question. The inspectors' July letter recorded that a revised statement on unmet need was being prepared for publication in September 2026, and they intend to explore it at a focused hearing session. It was not among the examination documents when the council last updated its examination page on 17 September. Whether the neighbouring councils agree to take the borough's gap of 2,533 homes goes a long way to deciding whether the plan can proceed with 240 a year.

On 16 September the council told the inspectors that "it is fully expected that the updated housing position will require main modifications" to the submitted plan. Changes to the requirement or to the allocations would show first in a schedule of modifications, published for comment before the inspectors report. Timing is tight as well: the inspectors noted that a plan ending in 2042 would need to be adopted by the end of March 2027 to look fifteen years ahead from adoption, as national policy expects.

Delivery is the last piece. The Housing Delivery Test 2025 dates from 17 August 2026, and a new one is due each year. At 152% the borough is well clear of every threshold. The next test drops 2022/23, the strongest year in the table above, and adds 2025/26, one of the weakest. Should the result slip under 95%, an action plan would follow; under 85%, a 20% buffer would be added whenever supply is worked out; and under 75%, unmet need would be treated as evidenced under policy S5.

Town Sites Now, Edge Land After the Hearings

• Sites inside the towns can be looked at now under policy S4, whatever happens at the hearings.
• Edge land and land near a green wedge boundary is best prepared for the hearing outcome and any modifications.
• Not sure which applies? Our free review answers that first, and how it works shows the steps.