Selling Land in Guildford

• Land on the edges of Ash and Tongham that sits beyond the Green Belt.
• Green Belt parcels hemmed in by homes, roads or the railway, which may be grey belt.
• Yards, depots, nurseries and equestrian sites with lawful buildings or hardstanding.
• Land within an easy walk of one of the borough's twelve stations.
• Open land that could serve as SANG for homes nearby.
• Larger holdings to put forward for the new Local Plan.

Land inside the Surrey Hills, or within 400 metres of the heaths, faces a much higher bar, and we will say so plainly. For land that fits, we fund all of the planning work under an option agreed at a fixed price, above today's value, and you keep the land and owe nothing if permission is not granted. Our land value page explains how a price is reached.

• 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 2019 strategy planned for at least 10,678 homes between 2015 and 2034, or 562 a year. It reached its fifth anniversary on 25 April 2024, and from then on the council has had to test its supply against the government's standard method instead. The statement with a base date of 1 April 2025, published as an appendix to the council's 2025 land availability assessment, sets out the result:

On these figures the borough is about 2,480 homes short of a five-year supply. Most of the 3,655 comes from sites that already have permission, with 336 allowed for windfall. For scale, the council's monitoring report counts 490 homes completed in 2024/25, including 471 ordinary dwellings, against a need now above 1,100 a year.

Why You May Read 1,151 or 1,168

The supply statement uses 1,168 homes a year. The council's Local Plan questions and answers page gives 1,151. Both come from the standard method, which is recalculated as new affordability and household data appear, so the later page most likely reflects a newer run. The difference is under 2% and changes nothing for a landowner: either figure roughly doubles the adopted plan's 562. The same page admits that without a five-year supply it is much more difficult to resist speculative development.

For an owner thinking of selling land in Guildford, that admission is the point: the council's own figures give a well placed site weight that it would not carry in a borough with five years of land.

The 2019 strategy removed only 1.5% of the Green Belt for its allocations. The new plan starts from a Green Belt Assessment published in 2026 and revised in August 2026, after national policy changed the definition of grey belt. The council's questions and answers on it are clear about its limits:

• Its main purpose is to identify grey belt land, as evidence for the new Local Plan.
• Land found to be grey belt may still be unsuitable for development for other reasons.
• Identifying land as grey belt does not grant planning permission, and the council describes the assessment as a starting point only when deciding applications on land that may be grey belt.

For a landowner, the assessment shows where the argument can begin. A field in a parcel it identifies as grey belt has an easier case to open; one it rates as strongly contributing may be better put forward through the plan.

Thames Basin Heaths

The council's avoidance strategy, updated in 2024, sets three zones around the protected heaths. Within 400 metres there is a presumption against any net increase in homes. Between 400 metres and 5 kilometres, new homes need mitigation before occupation, through Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace (SANG) and a payment towards access management, both charged by bedroom numbers and indexed each year. Between 5 and 7 kilometres, schemes of more than 50 homes are looked at case by case.

SANG is provided at 8 hectares per 1,000 new residents. The council runs its own at Riverside Nature Reserve, Chantry Woods, Effingham Common and Lakeside Nature Reserve, and is considering Tyting Farm and Burpham Court Farm. A scheme can also provide bespoke SANG, which normally passes to the council with funding for 125 years.

The Surrey Hills

The south of the borough lies in the Surrey Hills National Landscape, with Areas of Great Landscape Value around it. A proposal to add 129 square kilometres, 30.5% more than today, went to the Secretary of State in September 2026. Local reporting of the proposals in November 2025 listed the Hog's Back, the Binscombe Hills, the Wey Valley, Hatchlands and East Clandon, and Cranleigh Waters among the areas that reach into Guildford borough. The government says the extension areas gain no new status unless and until the order is confirmed, and there is no set timescale for that decision.