Selling Land in the Vale of White Horse

• Fields on the edge of a larger village such as Drayton, Steventon, Sutton Courtenay or Shrivenham, with a road frontage.
• Land around Wantage, Grove, Faringdon or Abingdon-on-Thames that could suit the next plan.
• Paddocks, yards and plots inside settlements, where policy S4 applies whatever the supply.
• Yards and other previously developed land in the Oxford Green Belt, which national policy treats differently from open fields.
• Holdings near Harwell Campus and Milton Park, where the plan concentrates jobs.

Our paddocks and small sites page covers the smaller end. For any of these, we agree an option at a fixed price set above today's value and pay for every survey, report and application ourselves. You keep the land in use, and if no permission comes, it stays yours with nothing owed. How it works sets out each step.

• 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.

Both parts of the adopted Local Plan 2031 are more than five years old, Part 1 from December 2016 and Part 2 from October 2019, so supply is measured against the government's standard method. The council's September 2026 statement, looking forward from 1 April 2026, sets out the sums:

More than a third of the supply sits in Category B, sites whose delivery the council has to prove with clear evidence, and a cut of more than 266 homes from any part of the count would take the figure below five years.

What a Full Supply Means for a Field

While the council's figure stands above five years, a supply shortfall cannot be used as the evidence of unmet need that policy S5 of the August 2026 framework looks for beyond a settlement's edge. Plots and yards inside a settlement are different: policy S4 favours homes there unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits, whatever the numbers say. S5 does not reach land in the Oxford Green Belt at all. There, grey belt has its own need test, usually shown by a supply short of five years or a delivery result below 75%, and larger schemes must meet the Golden Rules, as our grey belt guide explains. For edge-of-village land, the route turns on whether the council's figure holds up, and it has already been tested.

Part 1 of the plan requires at least 20,560 homes over 2011 to 2031, and a further 2,200 were later added towards Oxford's unmet need. The council's monitoring report for 2023/24 splits the total across three sub-areas:

More than half the growth is concentrated in the South East Vale, the part the plan links to Science Vale, around Wantage and Grove and at Valley Park, which the plan places adjoining Didcot. In practice a handful of very large sites dominate supply, and each slip on them is felt in the supply figure, as Drayton showed.

Stage 3 Hearings, the Inspectors' Report and Adoption

1. Stage 3 hearings, from 17 November 2026, on the five-year supply and the sites meant for years six to fifteen after adoption.
2. The inspectors' report, expected in March 2027 according to the councils' Local Development Scheme of June 2026.
3. Adoption, expected in May 2027, when the plan takes over from both parts of the Local Plan 2031.

Adoption changes the yardstick. For its first five years, an adopted plan's own requirement normally replaces the standard method in the supply test, and the submitted Vale figures are lower than today's 970. A rule added on 1 July 2026 complicates this. When applications are decided, a 20% buffer must be added if the requirement was adopted within the past five years, examined against a pre-December 2024 Framework, and comes to no more than 80% of the standard method figure. As this plan is examined under the 2023 Framework, much depends on the figure accepted once the plan period moves: the submitted 816 a year sits a little above 80% of 970, the later 633 well below it. Arguments like Drayton's rest on the current yardstick, and they are strongest in the months before adoption.

The Next Joint Plan, From Scoping to April 2029

Work on the next joint plan has begun, with a scoping consultation that ran from 8 to 29 September 2026, before any sites are proposed. The councils' published timetable then sets a consultation on the plan's proposed content from 1 June to 13 July 2027, the proposed plan itself from 7 March 2028, submission on 31 October 2028 and adoption on 30 April 2029. Larger holdings around the towns belong in that process, and the sooner their evidence is prepared, the better.

Reorganisation is on hold. The government decided in July 2026 that most of the district would join West Berkshire and most of South Oxfordshire in a new Ridgeway Council from April 2028, with some wards going to a Greater Oxford Council. On 7 September it paused that decision for review, and the Vale's leader, Councillor Bethia Thomas, called the announcement "a shock to us all". Under the government's review, elections in May 2027 go ahead on today's boundaries, and the district council remains the planning authority.