Selling Land in West Northamptonshire

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edges of Daventry, Towcester, Brackley, Brixworth or Long Buckby.
• Land that backs onto existing homes in villages such as Roade, Bugbrooke, Moulton or Middleton Cheney.
• Paddocks, yards and former farm buildings next to a village.
• Previously developed land inside or on the edge of Northampton.
• Larger holdings near the proposed allocations, where the plan examination will shape what comes next.

The surveys and each planning stage are paid for by us. Our option sets your price before any of that work starts, higher than the land fetches today, and you carry on using the land. If no permission comes, you still own it and there is no bill. Farmers with a whole holding to think about can see how we approach that 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 council's Housing Land Availability Report 2026, published in July 2026, sets out its own calculation:

Against the 13,188 homes needed, that leaves a gap of 1,833, exactly the size of the windfall allowance. A year earlier the picture was different. The 2025 assessment found 5.5 years against 2,503 homes a year, so the target barely moved. The supply did: 14,409 deliverable homes in 2025, 11,355 in 2026. The officers' report to the August 2026 committee explains that the council's own research into lead-in times for major development led it to review when sites would start delivering, "consequently reducing our five year supply".

The Shortfall Had Already Been Tested at Appeal

The same report records that an inspector deciding an appeal on land to the west of Brackley took the view that the council could not show five years of supply for 2025 to 2030. A second appeal followed on 7 September 2026, when an inspector allowed up to 100 homes on land between Harlestone Road and York Way, beside Harlestone Firs, after a July hearing. Local reporting of that decision records that the council's latest figure was 4.3 years, the developer argued for less, and the inspector said the exact figure did not change the outcome, giving the shortage "significant weight".

For an owner selling land beside a town or service village here, two appeal decisions that each found the council short of five years show how much weight the shortfall now carries.

What a Supply Below Five Years Does for a Field

National policy since August 2026 handles this through policy S5: when a council cannot show five years of land, that gap is taken as evidence that homes are needed and not being provided. Approval does not follow automatically. Land beyond a settlement boundary still has to sit well against the town or village, with roads, school places and drainage able to cope, and its harm must not substantially outweigh its benefits. At 104%, the delivery test adds nothing to that argument here, so in West Northamptonshire the case rests on the supply, and on how well a field sits against Northampton, a town or a service village.

Much of the supply rests on the sustainable urban extensions the 2014 strategy placed around Northampton, and the 2026 assessment tracks them phase by phase. Phases with detailed approval count in the five years, but the large outline remainders mostly do not: the council places all 1,705 homes of the Kings Heath outline, and 1,575 of the 1,600 on the northern section of Northampton North, after 2031.

Local reporting of the August committee quoted councillors saying the planning team were "chasing a rainbow", since the council must evidence build dates that developers have little reason to share. It put the deliverable figure at around 10,000 homes, while the council's total is 11,355. Both are right on their own terms: the newspaper's figure matches the council's 10,047 homes on identified sites, before the windfall allowance is added and the lapse allowance taken off.

Every delay at a large extension shows up in the five-year count, while a few dozen homes on a village edge, with a clear access and a single owner, can be built well inside five years.

The council's local plan page confirms the direction: the plan presented on 14 September had to be published for at least six weeks from no later than Monday 5 October 2026, and that consultation is the window for comments on the allocations. The council was given until 29 September to put any exceptional circumstances to the government.

Submission by 31 December 2026, Examination in 2027

The council's September report expects the examination in 2027. As it advances, the plan gains weight against large unallocated schemes; modest sites on a settlement edge raise fewer of the questions an examination settles.

Supply is the other thing to watch. The council published its last two supply assessments in June 2025 and July 2026, and the next is the council's to publish, not ours to guess. If the supply stays short, S5 keeps its force; if five years returns, most unallocated fields will look to the plan instead.

The delivery result is refreshed yearly, and the one in force comes from the Housing Delivery Test 2025 of 17 August 2026. At 104% none of its consequences applies. A result under 95% means an action plan; under 85%, the buffer rises to 20% and the gap above grows; under 75%, S5 treats unmet need as evidenced.

There is no reorganisation to wait for. West Northamptonshire Council is itself the product of the 2021 reorganisation, so the council taking the plan to examination is the one expected to adopt it.