Selling Land in Mole Valley

• Land on the edge of Leatherhead, Ashtead, Bookham, Fetcham or Dorking, outside the National Landscape.
• Fields next to the inset villages of Beare Green, Brockham, Capel, Charlwood, Hookwood and Westcott.
• Land in the countryside beyond the Green Belt that relates well to an existing village.
• Previously developed land, including yards and redundant commercial buildings.
• Holdings large enough to be considered in the early review of the plan.

A paddock beside Beare Green and a field below the Downs at Fetcham need quite different evidence, but in both cases we pay for every survey, report and application, and any appeal. The stages from our first review to completion are set out on how it works.

• 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 plan took seven years from its first consultation in 2017 to adoption, with the examination paused from December 2022 to January 2024. It provides for at least 6,381 homes from 2020 to 2039, about 336 a year, and released some Green Belt land to get there, though the plan records 99.35% of the district's Green Belt, 19,522 hectares, as retained. Policy S1 spreads the new homes like this:

Why a New Plan Already Has a Review Built In

Policy S1 is candid about the gap. It says 336 homes a year is below the current housing need, and the supporting text gives the government's 2020 calculation for the district as 456 a year, explaining that the lower figure was chosen because housing land is severely constrained by the Green Belt, the National Landscape and the Area of Great Landscape Value. For that reason the plan commits the council to an early review, to be completed before the third anniversary of adoption, to find out whether more housing capacity is deliverable or developable.

That deadline falls in October 2027, six months after East Surrey takes over, so the review is likely to be carried forward by the new council. For sites left out in 2024, the review is the next realistic chance through the plan. How a submitted site is scored, and when to put evidence in, is covered in our call for sites and local plans guide.

Owners of land allocated in 2024, whether in the Hookwood area near the airport or on the fringes of Leatherhead and Dorking, still face a full application before anything can be built. Flood modelling near the Mole and its brooks, highway capacity, and design that answers the Surrey Hills views are the usual pieces of that work here, and we fund each of them.

Inside the Surrey Hills National Landscape, a major housing scheme has to show, among other tests, why it could not be built outside the designation. The council gives similar attention to the adjoining Areas of Great Landscape Value, and it notes that permission is needed in the National Landscape for some works that would not need an application elsewhere.

One Third or 37%?

The council's planning constraints page says the National Landscape and the Area of Great Landscape Value together make up about one third of the district, principally the chalk slopes of the North Downs and the Greensand Hills. The adopted plan puts the National Landscape alone at 37%. The web page reads as a rounded general description, while the plan gives the measured figure and is the document that decides applications. Either way, for an owner the practical point is that roughly a third or more of the district carries a landscape designation.

The boundary may also grow. The Surrey Hills National Landscape says the area could become 30% bigger, and on 7 September 2026 Natural England submitted a variation order to government whose proposed additions include areas named the Headley Hills, the Betchworth Hills and Mole Valley, and the Ockley Low Weald. Until ministers confirm it, land in those areas has no new status, but we read the landscape evidence behind each proposed addition before advising on a site there.

The Mole Gap to Reigate Escarpment Special Area of Conservation covers 888 hectares of the North Downs, including Norbury Park, Headley Heath, White Down and Box Hill. The council says development near it needs careful management so that extra recreational pressure does not put its features at risk.

Thames Basin Heaths Near Bookham

A small part of the north west of Bookham and the countryside around it falls between 400 metres and 5 kilometres from the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area. The council is not part of the joint delivery framework for the heaths and has not been required to allocate its own alternative green space, so it advises developers to discuss mitigation with Natural England before applying. On a larger holding, that can mean setting aside part of the land as natural green space.

The delivery result is the first signal. The government publishes the test annually; this page draws on Housing Delivery Test 2025, published on 17 August 2026, and each edition looks back over three financial years. At 72%, the district is near enough to the line that the first full years of building on the 2024 allocations could move it either way. We do not guess the next figure. We plan for both outcomes instead, so a site in the countryside beyond the Green Belt that leans on policy S5 is also given its own evidence of local need, which still counts if the automatic finding goes.

The supply position is why that matters. The council's Five-Year Housing Land Supply Review, published on 13 August 2026, finds 5.3 years, and the council says it can therefore demonstrate a five-year supply for decision-making purposes. A supply short of five years is the other usual way of showing unmet need, and here it is not available, so the delivery result is the only one of the two that supports S5, or the need test for grey belt housing, in Mole Valley today. The review came out four days before the Housing Delivery Test 2025, and a delivery result under 85% requires a 20% buffer in any later count, so a margin this modest deserves as close a reading as the next delivery result.

The second is the Surrey Hills. Natural England's proposed extension now waits on the Secretary of State, who can confirm, amend or refuse it. If it is confirmed, land in the Headley Hills, the Betchworth Hills and Mole Valley, and the Ockley Low Weald would meet the major development test described above, and the early review would have to plan around a larger protected area. If it is amended or refused, those areas keep the status they have now.

The third is who runs the review. East Surrey's councillors, elected in May 2026, inherit it, and their choices about its scope, and about whether to open a fresh call for sites, will shape which land gets tested.

None of the three has a date we can promise. What we can do is have the survey, access and landscape evidence for a site in hand before each one arrives, so that a change in the rules becomes a prompt to act rather than a reason to begin.