Selling Land in Elmbridge

• Paddocks and fields of an acre or more on the edge of Cobham, Walton, Hersham, Weybridge, Claygate or the Moleseys.
• Former nurseries, yards and equestrian sites with lawful buildings or hardstanding.
• Land within walking distance of a railway station.
• Larger holdings that could provide green space for Thames Basin Heaths mitigation as part of a scheme.
• Sites with road frontage or a clear route to one, and mostly in Flood Zone 1.

The planning work in Elmbridge often needs transport, ecology, flood and Green Belt evidence at once. We pay for all of it, including any appeal, and our how it works page explains what happens at each stage.

• 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 Draft Elmbridge Local Plan 2037 relied on brownfield land and small urban sites and released no Green Belt. In an interim findings letter dated 11 September 2024, the inspector set out why that would not work:

• Using the standard method, need was 650 homes a year, or 11,700 between 2022 and 2040, rather than the lower figure the council had put forward.
• Identified supply was 5,398 homes, leaving a shortfall of around 6,300 over the plan period.
• The council could show 3.8 years of housing land against its own figure, and only 2.4 years against the standard method.
• The workplace-based affordability ratio had risen from 13.31 to 20.02.
• Exceptional circumstances did exist to release some Green Belt land, and a significant number of the Green Belt sites the council had discounted were in clearly sustainable locations.

Full Council withdrew the plan on 26 February 2025. For landowners, the most useful part of that history is the inspector's view that Green Belt land close to the existing towns can be a sustainable place for new homes.

The numbers have moved a long way since. The council's land supply statement of December 2025, whose base date is set at 31 March 2025, puts local housing need under the revised standard method at 1,584 homes a year, well over double the figure the inspector used. Against that, the council says it can show only 1 year of housing land supply.

That finding is the most useful fact here for the owner of a field on the edge of Walton, Cobham or Hersham, because the next plan is being prepared with it on the record.

With adoption not planned until December 2028, many Elmbridge sites will be decided on applications under the current national framework. Delivery below 75% means the borough is treated as having unmet housing need, but the S5 route that follows from that does not apply to Green Belt land. The routes that do work are:

1. Inside the built-up area. Under policy S4, homes inside the towns should be approved unless the harm substantially outweighs the benefits. Large plots, backland and old commercial premises in Weybridge, Oxshott, Cobham and the other settlements are all in this category.
2. Grey belt on the edge of a town. A paddock boxed in by houses, or a strip squeezed between a main road and back gardens, may do little to hold back London. In a borough where the inspector found the last plan would meet less than half its housing need, and where supply now stands at 1 year, a scheme on land like that carries real weight, as long as it offers the extra affordable homes, local infrastructure and public open space that grey belt permissions now come with.
3. Old commercial uses in the Green Belt. A former nursery, contractor's yard or livery stable with lawful buildings and hardstanding can often be replaced with homes under Green Belt policy without a grey belt argument at all. Glasshouses and buildings used for farming do not count.

Where towns are so close together, the gaps between them matter. Fields that keep two neighbouring settlements visibly apart are harder to argue as grey belt than land enclosed on the edge of a single settlement. Anyone weighing up a field between Esher and Claygate, or Walton and Hersham, will find the tests in the grey belt guide.

The council's 2024 strategic flood risk assessment puts 78% of the borough in Flood Zone 1, 11% in Flood Zone 2 and 2% in Flood Zone 3a. The risk is concentrated in two places. Along the Thames, Walton, the Moleseys and Thames Ditton are most exposed. Inland, the Mole and the smaller River Rythe, which rises near Oxshott and flows north through Claygate to Thames Ditton, affect Cobham, Stoke d'Abernon, Downside, Esher, Claygate and Hersham. Where a field rises even slightly out of the floodplain, a layout can often keep every house on safe ground, and the flood risk guide walks through how that case is made.

The council's character study notes that the railways and the A3 and M25 shaped where the towns grew, and it counts 24 conservation areas across the borough. The same study picks out Weybridge, Walton, Esher, Thames Ditton and Cobham as the historic cores the borough grew from, and where land borders a conservation area, its character guides the height and materials of new homes. National policy favours well-designed homes within walking distance of a station with a good service, and noise and air quality beside the A3 and the M25 are the usual limits on land at the southern edge.

On a paddock near the Thames, the Wey or the Mole, the flood map is the first thing we read, because it can decide how much of the land is usable for homes before any other question is asked.