Selling Land in East Lindsey

• Fields next to the developed edge of Louth, Horncastle, Alford, Spilsby, Coningsby, Woodhall Spa or a large village, outside the Coastal Zone.
• Land that can be joined to the town by a footpath and reached by a safe road access.
• Larger farm holdings inland where part of the land could carry homes and the rest open space or biodiversity gain.
• Former yards, depots and redundant farm buildings in the villages, including barns that could be converted.
• Inherited land on the edge of an inland town, where a family wants the planning question settled before deciding what to do.

Land inside the Coastal Zone and open fields deep in the Wolds face the hardest tests, and we will say so after the first look. Where a site is worth taking forward we pay for the flood, landscape, ecology and highways work under an option at a price agreed at the start. Our page on selling farmland sets out how we look at larger holdings.

• 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 Core Strategy set a housing requirement of 7,819 homes for 2017 to 2031, at 558 homes a year after the first year. Because the plan has passed five years, supply is now tested against the standard method, the government's formula for local housing need, and the council's trajectory runs at 1,009 homes a year from 2024/25. Its five-year supply statement for the position to 30 June 2026 works the sum through:

The shortfall is the gap between the 6,183 homes the trajectory asked for from April 2017 to June 2026 and the 5,012 actually built. The council loads all of it into the next five years, under the Sedgefield approach, and counts only 3,364 of the 5,751 homes allocated or permitted as deliverable in that time.

Where the 20% Buffer Comes From

A buffer is extra land added on top of the five years, usually 5%. The council has raised it to 20% from 1 July 2026, reasoning that the December 2024 framework calls for one where a plan's requirement is more than five years old and below 80% of the standard method figure; 558 homes is about 55% of 1,009. The framework's own wording aims that rule at requirements adopted within the past five years after examination under a pre-December 2024 version, so for a 2018 plan the higher buffer rests on the council's reading. The conclusion holds either way: with the ordinary 5% buffer, the same statement gives 2.60 years.

The figure has fallen steadily: the council claimed 5.42 years when an outline application at Tothby Lane, Alford was refused in December 2018, and its February 2025 assessment, as an applicant's statement records it, gave 3.08 years with a 5% buffer.

How Much Weight the Shortfall Carries

Policy S5 in the August 2026 framework opens land beyond a town or village's limits to housing when three things line up: evidenced unmet need, a site that sits well with the settlement, and infrastructure to serve it. A supply shortfall is evidence of that need for the decision maker to weigh against any harm; it does not decide the case on its own. With a delivery result of 129%, the supply position is what carries the argument here.

For anyone selling farm land to developers near an inland town, that is the opening: the council's own sums show the 2018 allocations falling well short, and a field that sits naturally against Louth, Alford or Spilsby, clear of the Coastal Zone, now meets a shortfall the council itself has measured.

The Core Strategy defines the Coastal Zone as the area covered by the Environment Agency's Coastal Flood Hazard Map, and concludes that large scale housing growth there is not realistic. It also treats the whole of each of these settlements as inside the zone:

• The resort towns. Skegness, Mablethorpe, Sutton on Sea and Trusthorpe.
• The holiday villages. Chapel St Leonards, Ingoldmells, Addlethorpe and Anderby.
• The northern marsh. The Somercotes, North Cotes, Skidbrooke with Saltfleet Haven, the three Saltfleetby parishes and the two Theddlethorpes.
• Inland of Skegness. Croft and New Leake.

Policy SP3 limits coastal housing to the roughly 1,257 homes already committed, with exceptions under policies SP18, SP8 (rural exception sites) and SP9 (single plots), and the Settlement Proposals document for the coast allocates no housing sites in its towns and large villages.

How Seriously the Hazard Map Is Applied

The map grades land from danger for all down to low hazard. In January 2022 the Secretary of State refused two called in caravan schemes, 18 static pitches at Hogsthorpe and 189 static caravans at Skegness Water Leisure Park, and was minded to refuse a third at Sutton on Sea. Each failed the first part of the Exception Test and conflicted with policy SP17, and none had been shown to be safe for its lifetime over the longer season proposed.

For an owner here, the honest position is that new homes on coastal land are rare, and our flood risk guide explains why the hazard bands matter so much. The plan gives strong support to tourism, business and employment uses on the coast, so coastal land still has routes; they are simply not usually housing.

The Core Strategy promised a full review of its housing policies, to be submitted for examination by April 2022. The council ran an issues and options consultation and a call for land from 15 February to 12 April 2021, as a partial review, and its Local Plan Review page still gives that Regulation 18 stage as the latest.

In 2024 officers told the Planning Policy Committee that the plan was unlikely to reach the Regulation 19 stage by the end of that year, that the current plan remained fit for purpose, and that work was aimed at the government's December 2026 target. Members asked for a revised Local Development Scheme setting out a programme for the review. The council still accepts site submissions through its call for land form, so the plan route stays open for land that needs an allocation, while the shortfall lets a well placed site be tested by application now.