Selling Land in Newark and Sherwood

• Land adjoining the urban boundary of Newark, Balderton or Fernwood, above the Trent flood plain.
• Fields on the edge of Southwell, Ollerton and Boughton, Edwinstowe, Clipstone or Rainworth.
• Land against the envelopes of Collingham, Sutton-on-Trent, Farnsfield or Bilsthorpe.
• Green Belt parcels near Lowdham, Blidworth or Gunthorpe that are hemmed in by roads or buildings, already developed, or of little Green Belt value.
• Paddocks, yards and gaps inside a village envelope.
• Larger holdings that could form part of an allocation in the new plan.

Where supply is short, a well prepared application can often run alongside putting land forward for the new plan, and choosing between them is the first thing our review settles. The option we offer sets the price on day one, higher than the land's present value. Surveys, reports and the application itself are all paid by us, and we also contribute to the fees of whichever solicitor and land agent you pick, so having your side handled well is free to you. A paddock or a single field can be just as worthwhile, and our page on paddocks and small sites explains.

• 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.

Newark and Sherwood's supply position has swung sharply in the past two years, and almost all of it comes from the measuring stick rather than from what is being built. The council's own statements tell the story:

The latest statement, published in February 2026, explains why it uses the standard method: the Amended Core Strategy was adopted in March 2019 and is now more than five years old. Its calculation runs like this:

Two Need Figures, One Conclusion

The statement uses 691 homes a year, the figure at its base date. The council's scoping document for the new plan, published in June 2026, gives a later figure of 697 a year, or 13,940 over a 20-year plan. The difference most likely reflects the government updating the data behind the method. For a landowner it changes little: on either figure the supply falls short, whereas measured against the Core Strategy's 454 a year the same homes would have cleared five years.

In the August 2026 framework, policy S5 counts a council's missing years of land as evidence that need is going unmet. That opens an argument rather than granting a permission. A field outside the boundary still needs a sound physical link to the settlement it adjoins, with roads, school places and drainage able to take the extra homes, and any harm is weighed against what the scheme brings. The Core Strategy's own tests still count for something too: Spatial Policy 3 judges schemes in the smaller villages on location, scale, need, impact and character, and keeps the open countryside strictly controlled.

The district splits into two planning landscapes. The scoping document records that the Nottingham and Derby Green Belt runs down the district's western flank from the Trent up to Rainworth. There, S5 does not apply. The Core Strategy focuses Green Belt growth on Blidworth and Lowdham, with Gunthorpe and the part of Bulcote next to Burton Joyce, and homes on other Green Belt land need it to be grey belt, previously developed or released through the new plan. For grey belt housing, the supply shortfall helps meet the need test, and larger schemes then have to meet the Golden Rules, which cover affordable housing, infrastructure and green space. Our guide to grey belt land sets out how a parcel is judged.

1. Around Newark, Balderton and Fernwood. The top of the settlement order and outside the Green Belt, so a well related edge-of-town site is where S5 has the most reach. Flooding is the limit: the district profile records that Flood Zone 3 takes most of the land around the River Trent. The allocations plan also keeps the long-standing open breaks between Newark and Farndon, Winthorpe and Coddington, where development is not normally allowed.
2. Southwell and the Sherwood Service Centres. Southwell, Ollerton and Boughton, Edwinstowe, Clipstone and Rainworth take 30% of planned growth between them. The scoping document treats Birklands and Bilhaugh and the wider Sherwood Forest area as particularly sensitive, naming air pollution, recreational pressure and effects on nightjar and woodlark habitats as risks that call for a precautionary approach.
3. Principal Villages. Collingham, Sutton-on-Trent, Farnsfield and Bilsthorpe are not among the Green Belt villages the Core Strategy names, while Lowdham and Blidworth are. Each has its own envelope, and several have neighbourhood plans.
4. Inside an envelope. Plots and gaps within an urban boundary or village envelope sit under policy S4, which starts from approval, with refusal reserved for cases where the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits.

Selling land for development in Newark and Sherwood therefore starts with two lines on the map, the Green Belt flank and the flood zone along the Trent, because between them they decide which route a field can take.

A New Plan and a Residual Need of 7,234 Homes

The council's district profile for the new plan sets 13,940 homes over 20 years against 7,535 homes with planning permission at April 2025. After an 11% allowance for permissions that lapse, it leaves a residual need of at least 7,234 homes to be found. The scoping document says the council believes it should develop a different spatial strategy from the current one, which sends most growth to the Newark urban area, and it records 196 sites put forward in the 2025 call for sites. It reopened the call alongside scoping, with submissions taken until 30 July 2026.

The plan's timetable is being reset. The scoping document set out these stages:

The council's new local plan page explains that, with reorganisation paused and district elections now set for May 2027, Gateway 1 moved to the end of October 2026. The council put a report on Gateway 1, with an amended timetable, before its Cabinet meeting of 13 October 2026, so that consultations do not fall straight after new councillors take office, and the page says the plan is still intended to be in place by 2029. The amended timetable that follows that meeting is the one to read against the table above, since the later dates are expected to move with Gateway 1.

Supply is the figure to follow. The statement for 1 April 2025 appeared in February 2026, so one based on 1 April 2026 may take a similar time. It will show whether completions and new permissions have narrowed the gap against a need of close to 700 a year. The Housing Delivery Test 2025 was released on 17 August 2026; at 139%, the council is far from any of its consequences, so the delivery test is not what drives land decisions here.

The Gap Between Two Plans Is When the Shortfall Works Hardest

The period between the allocations plan's adoption and the new plan's adoption is when the supply shortfall does most work, since the council has no new allocations to point to. For well placed land outside the Green Belt, that argues for preparing an application now while also putting the land forward for the new plan. How long each route usually takes is set out in our guide on how long planning takes.