Selling Land in South Holland

• Fields on the edges of Spalding and Pinchbeck, including land near the planned course of the relief road.
• Land beside Holbeach, Long Sutton, Crowland, Donington or Sutton Bridge, the district's main service centres.
• Gardens, paddocks, yards and redundant farm buildings inside village boundaries such as Moulton, Weston, Gosberton or Whaplode.
• Reserve sites named in Policy 12 of the plan, which lie inside settlement boundaries, such as the one at Holbeach.
• Larger arable holdings that could be put forward to the new joint plan, and former packing sheds, glasshouses or food industry yards with lawful buildings.

The price is fixed in the option at the outset, above the land's value today as farmland or a yard, and we pay for every flood model, drainage strategy and application at our own cost and risk. Our guide to how land is put forward in a local plan explains the route for larger holdings. You go on farming or using the land until completion, and if permission is refused, the land stays yours and you owe us 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.

South Holland District Council decides applications against a plan written jointly with Boston, whose Policy 1 ranks every settlement and so governs how much building each may take:

The plan points out that Pinchbeck's parish boundary runs up to the urban edge of Spalding, so land there can relate to the town as much as to the village, and that Holbeach, with more than 8,000 people, is of a very different scale to the other main service centres.

Inside a settlement boundary, national policy S4 expects a scheme to be approved unless its harm would substantially outweigh its benefits. Beyond the line, policy S5 can support homes on land that relates well to the town and has the infrastructure to serve it, provided unmet need is evidenced, the subject of the next section.

So the first thing we check on a South Holland site is the tier of its nearest town and whether the field touches that boundary: a field against Spalding or Long Sutton starts from a very different place than one beside Tongue End.

Growth on the west side of Spalding is tied to one road. Lincolnshire County Council describes the Spalding Western Relief Road as a 6.5 kilometre single carriageway in five sections, meant among other aims to support housing growth in South Holland, with its first southern section being built as part of the Holland Park housing development.

The county council's update of January 2026 puts the position plainly: opening the finished northern section is completely contingent on new houses to the west being built. It said developers are expected to contribute to every remaining section, and that the original completion date for the whole route was 2040.

If your land lies west of Spalding, between Bourne Road and Vernatt's Drain or near Holland Park, how each section is funded matters as much as any housing figure. Our guide to access and ransom strips explains why a strip of land beside a new road can carry weight of its own.

Not every sale here is a large field. Two thresholds shape what a small plot inside a village boundary is worth.

The first is affordable housing. The joint planning unit explains that Policy 18 now applies only to sites of 10 or more dwellings, 0.5 hectares or more, or 1,000 square metres or more of internal floor space, so a modest plot in Moulton, Gosberton or Weston below all three carries no affordable requirement.

The second is flood risk. Under Policy 4 the sequential test is not required for minor development, so a small group of homes faces a lighter flood test than a large scheme, though floor levels and resilience still apply.

Owners who want to sell land without planning, or to sell inherited land that has sat unused in a village, often find the plot is closer to permission than they expected once the boundary and these two thresholds are checked. Our page on paddocks and small sites sets out the plots we look at, from a paddock behind a house in Cowbit to a disused yard in Long Sutton.