Selling Land in Gedling

• Fields next to Arnold, Mapperley, Carlton or Gedling village that housing or roads already enclose.
• Land close to the five grey belt allocations that shares their character.
• Yards, depots and former colliery or commercial land in the Green Belt.
• Plots and backland inside the urban area.
• Land near Calverton, Ravenshead or Bestwood Village that could suit a later plan.

If your land fits, we fix the price at the outset, above its current value, and fund every survey, report and application, including any appeal. You go on using the land until completion, and a refusal leaves it in your hands with no bill to settle. We put money towards your own solicitor and land agent too, so taking proper advice comes at no cost to you.

• 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 Five Year Housing Land Supply Assessment, published in December 2025 and covering the five years from 1 April 2025, explains that the housing figure in the 2014 strategy is out of date, so the council must test its supply against the standard method instead. The calculation runs as follows:

The target of 3,350 less the supply of 2,498 in the table leaves 852 homes. The assessment's conclusion quotes a slightly different pair, 2,504 homes and an undersupply of 846, a small internal difference that does not move the result. Delivery has improved in recent years, and the Authority Monitoring Report 2024 to 2025 records net completions of 691 in 2022/23, 604 in 2023/24 and 463 in 2024/25, against 360 or fewer in each year from 2011/12 to 2021/22. The latest year, at 463, was well below the 638 now required, and the deliverable sites in the assessment add up to less than five years' worth.

For an owner selling land in Gedling, the gap between the 463 homes built in the latest year and the 638 now required is the shortfall in its plainest form.

How That Shortfall Meets the Grey Belt Test

Policy S5 of the August 2026 framework, which supports homes beyond a settlement's edge where unmet need is evidenced, is switched off inside the Green Belt. Beyond Gedling's built-up area, the land outside the Green Belt includes safeguarded land, and the draft plan proposes to build on all of it, saying this "fully exhausts all safeguarded land in the Borough". For most fields, the question is therefore grey belt, and national policy sets it out in three parts:

• The land is previously developed, or plays no strong part in checking Nottingham's spread or in keeping towns apart.
• Homes there would not fundamentally undermine the purposes of the remaining Green Belt, and the site is sustainably located.
• There is an evidenced need for homes. For housing, that means a Housing Delivery Test score under the 75% mark, or deliverable land for fewer than five years with the buffer counted in.

Gedling's result of 125% rules out the first kind of evidence, but its own figure of 3.73 years supplies the second. So today the need part of the test is met, and the argument turns on the land itself. Major housing schemes on Green Belt land also have to satisfy the Golden Rules covering affordable housing, supporting infrastructure and green space open to the public. Our grey belt guide sets out how each purpose is judged.

In February 2025 the Greater Nottingham Planning Partnership reported on its news page that Gedling had decided to withdraw from the joint strategic plan to focus on its own. The council's emerging local plan page explains that the Gedling Local Development Plan will replace both the Aligned Core Strategy and the Local Planning Document. Its issues and options stage ran from 21 July to 1 September 2025, and the publication draft was consulted on from 22 June to 3 August 2026.

The plan runs to March 2043 and sets a requirement of 638 homes a year, the standard method figure, or 11,484 homes in all. It does not ask for the same number every year:

The paper counts 6,235 homes from the fourteen new allocations on top of existing commitments, and records that "upon adoption of the GLDP Gedling Borough Council will have a 5.39 year land supply." The steps are what make that possible: the paper explains that the lower target in the early years gives the larger allocations time to get going before the higher target applies.

The Sites Already Under Way

The monitoring report tracks the strategic sites from the current plans. At Teal Close, 507 of 830 homes had been built by March 2025. At Gedling Colliery and Chase Farm, 634 of 1,050 were built. At Top Wighay Farm, allocated for 845 homes, reserved matters for 763 were approved in September 2024 and construction started in October 2025.

The council's Local Development Scheme of May 2026 sets out the path from here:

Once submitted, the plan will carry more weight in decisions, and the council can be expected to lean on it against large sites it has not chosen. Smaller grey belt and previously developed sites raise fewer of the questions the examination exists to settle.

After Adoption, 5.39 Years on the Council's Own Figures

If the plan is adopted with its stepped requirement, the council expects to show 5.39 years of supply. The need part of the grey belt test would then no longer be met through supply, so the stretch before adoption is when a grey belt application stands on its firmest ground.

Until then, the shortfall stands. The last assessment appeared in December 2025, and the next, from an April 2026 base, would update the shortfall. The current edition, the Housing Delivery Test 2025, dates from 17 August 2026. At 125%, Gedling faces none of the test's consequences, so the supply figure, not the delivery result, is the one to watch.

Reorganisation is on hold. A national review of reorganisation, announced by the government on 7 September 2026, withdrew four decisions, paused plans in other areas and kept the May 2027 elections on the current council map. Ashfield District Council's reorganisation page confirms the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire programme is among those paused, so Gedling Borough Council remains the authority taking its plan through examination. More on the county picture is on our Nottinghamshire page.

Edge-of-Nottingham Land Now, Village Land for the Next Plan

• Contained edge-of-Nottingham land is worth reviewing now, while the shortfall stands and before adoption.
• Land near the draft allocations that was not put forward before the comment period closed on 3 August 2026 is usually better served by an application while the shortfall lasts than by the examination.
• Village land is more likely to suit the plan after this one, but the survey work we pay for keeps its value.