Selling Land in North East Lincolnshire

• Fields on the edge of Humberston, Waltham, New Waltham, Laceby, Healing or Immingham, outside a strategic wedge and within walking distance of services.
• Land on the fringe of Grimsby and Cleethorpes where a new neighbourhood could join the existing streets.
• Larger farm holdings where part of the land could carry homes and the rest provide open space, bird habitat or biodiversity gain.
• Yards, depots and older commercial buildings in Grimsby and Immingham that could make way for homes.
• Smaller plots and redundant farm buildings in Habrough, Stallingborough and the other villages.

Land deep in the coastal flood zone or inside a strategic wedge faces the hardest tests, and our first look will tell you so plainly. For land that clears those hurdles, the flood, bird, landscape and highways studies and every application are paid for by us, and the option price is agreed before any of that work begins. Larger holdings are covered on our farmland 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.

The Housing Delivery Test 2025 counts 1,466 homes built against 601 needed over its three years, a result of 244%. The council's own figures tell the same story over a longer run: 4,230 homes were completed between the start of the plan period in April 2013 and April 2025, at rates consistently above the earlier version of the government formula.

The land supply is another matter. The council's Five Year Housing Land Supply Assessment 2025, based on monitoring at 1 April 2025, concludes that it "can now only identify" 3.6 years. Because the plan was adopted more than five years earlier, the assessment no longer uses the plan's own requirement. It tests supply against the standard method, which gave 618 homes a year and a basic five-year requirement of 3,090 homes. It adds a windfall allowance of 65 homes a year for years four and five, and takes off 45 a year for demolitions and other losses.

Why Strong Building and a Shortfall Sit Side by Side

The adopted plan stepped its requirement over time, with 488 homes a year for 2018/19 to 2022/23 and 649 a year for 2023/24 to 2027/28, averaging 512 a year across the plan. Councils measure delivery against past need and supply against the next five years. The borough has built well above what was asked of it, but the sites it can count as deliverable over the next five years fall short of a yardstick of more than 600 homes a year.

The government has put that position on the record. The minister's letter of 25 September 2026 notes the council's "positive record" against the Housing Delivery Test but states that it cannot currently demonstrate a five-year supply, and that it "remains vulnerable to piecemeal and speculative development".

What the Shortfall Does for a Site Beyond a Boundary

Under policy S5 of the August 2026 framework, land beyond a settlement can be considered for housing where unmet need is evidenced, the site is well related to the settlement and it can be served by infrastructure. The council's shortfall counts as evidence of that need, which a decision maker weighs against any harm; it does not settle the case by itself. How S4 and S5 fit together is covered in our guide to the 2026 framework. Here it is the supply figure, not the delivery result, that carries that weight.

For an owner thinking of selling land for development on the edge of Waltham, Laceby or Healing, that shortfall is the council's own admission that more sites are needed, and it is the starting point of any case we would make.

Flood Risk Behind the Defences

The pre-submission draft plan of September 2026 accepts that a significant part of the urban area would be at high risk of flooding if the defences were not maintained. Its draft flood policy asks every scheme to pass the sequential test, the search for land at lower risk, and adds that the regeneration benefits of building in high-risk areas should also be considered. Along the South Humber Bank, sites fronting the sea wall between the ports of Immingham and Grimsby must keep a strip of 15 metres from the toe of the defences free of building, and the shoreline management plan for this coast holds the line along most of the south bank.

For a field on the coastal plain, the flood zone of the part where homes would go, and whether a safe way in and out stays dry, usually decides the matter before anything else. Our flood risk guide explains the sequential and exception tests in plain terms.

Farmland That the Estuary's Birds Depend On

Golden plover, lapwing, curlew and pink-footed goose feed on fields well away from the mudflats. The council's Habitats Regulations Assessment of September 2026 considered a buffer of 15 kilometres for these birds, and found that arable fields are the habitat with the potential to be functionally linked land, meaning land the protected birds rely on even though it sits outside the designated site.

Policy 9 of the adopted plan, and draft policy 7 of the new one, deal separately with habitat mitigation for the industrial land on the South Humber Bank. If your land is arable and lies within 15 kilometres of the estuary, a winter bird survey comes early in our review, because its result can shape the layout of a scheme as much as any planning policy.

The words Green Belt do not appear in the draft plan. The gaps between settlements are guarded instead by eight strategic wedges, which the council says came under considerable pressure as several settlements expanded quickly after 2018. They run from the gap between Immingham and the industry to its north, through those between Stallingborough and Healing, Aylesby and Laceby, and Laceby and Grimsby, to the gaps that keep Waltham, New Waltham and Humberston apart from Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Inside a wedge, draft Strategic Policy 6 refuses any form of development unless it does not harm the wedge's purposes, or is essential there and its public benefits override the impact, and land next to a wedge must show it does not undermine the reason for the designation.

With no Green Belt in the plan, the grey belt rules play no part here, and S5 can apply to well placed land beyond a development boundary. The wedges are the local equivalent of a firm line, so the first map we check for land near the villages is the wedge boundary.

The Wolds and the Freeport

In the south of the borough the plan area rises into the Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape, where the landscape test is strictest. On the estuary, the draft plan refers to the formal designation of the Humber Freeport, and it sends 15% to 20% of the borough's new homes to Immingham and its fringes, the town beside the largest of the ports.

Greater Lincolnshire's Spatial Strategy

North East Lincolnshire lies within the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority. The authority's draft housing strategy, put to its Business and Infrastructure Board in July 2026, says the authority is required to produce a spatial development strategy that "will guide local plans, setting out how housing growth is apportioned and distributed". No timetable for it is given, so for now the borough's own plan sets where homes go.