Selling Land in Woking

• Plots, yards and larger gardens inside Woking, Knaphill, Byfleet, West Byfleet and the other built-up areas.
• Old yards, depots and commercial plots in the Green Belt, with a lawful use on record.
• Green Belt land enclosed by homes, roads, the railway or the canal that may be grey belt.
• Land safeguarded in the Site Allocations DPD for needs beyond 2027.
• Open holdings that could serve as SANG for homes elsewhere.
• Sites more than 400 metres from Horsell Common, Sheets Heath and Brookwood Heath.

We pay for every survey and report, including the heathland assessment, under an option whose price is settled on day one, above the land's present value. You keep using your land until the purchase completes, and if no permission is ever granted, it remains yours with nothing owed to us.

• 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 Core Strategy plans for 4,964 homes over 2010 to 2027, or 292 a year. Reviews in 2018 and 2023 both found no need to change it, and the 2023 review set the figures side by side:

The review kept the lower figure because of three constraints, the Green Belt, the Thames Basin Heaths and flood risk, and pointed to the inspector's acceptance of the Green Belt review when the Site Allocations DPD was examined.

The Council's Supply Calculation, and Three Ways It Has Been Reported

The working sits in the five-year supply supplement to the council's 2023 monitoring report:

The same supply has been quoted three ways. The supplement gives 8.1 years with a 5% buffer, and 7.8 years in an illustration with 10%. The 2023 review quoted 7.8 years as the 5% result. The June 2024 action plan, prepared after a delivery result that brought a 20% buffer, put it at 7.1 years. The differences are all about the buffer; on every version the borough had well over five years against its own requirement at 1 April 2023.

The council has since published a 2025 statement covering April 2025 to March 2030. It is issued as a scanned document whose headline figure has not been reported elsewhere, so we check it directly when reviewing a site.

Where supply is measured against 292 homes a year, as in the 2023 review, the routes that do not depend on a shortfall carry most weight:

1. Inside the town and villages. New homes within a settlement are judged under national policy S4, which weighs heavily in their favour: they should be approved unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits. Plots, backland and yards in Woking, Knaphill, Byfleet and West Byfleet come first.
2. Brownfield land in the Green Belt. A former builder's yard, a lorry park or a site carrying lawful commercial buildings is treated on its own terms by Green Belt policy, although former farm buildings do not qualify. Our brownfield and yards page explains how they are judged.
3. Grey belt. Green Belt land that plays only a weak part in the Green Belt's purposes can be grey belt, but homes on it need evidenced unmet need. The usual evidence is a supply short of five years, and against 292 homes a year the council's calculation shows 8.1 years at 1 April 2023, so a housing case on grey belt here is hard today and would strengthen only if the supply position changed. The purposes test and the Golden Rules that follow it are covered in our grey belt guide.
4. Through the new plan. Safeguarded land and larger Green Belt holdings will in most cases come forward through the Local Plan to 2044 rather than an application.

Policy S5, which supports well related land beyond a settlement's edge where unmet need is shown, does not apply in the Green Belt, so it has limited reach in Woking.

For most owners selling land in Woking the result is a split: a plot or an old yard can be taken forward now, while a larger Green Belt holding is prepared for the 2044 plan.

The 2023 review asked for the Core Strategy to be updated in time to adopt a replacement before its plan period ends in 2027, but the council's timetable now points to adoption in April 2029, and the next review of the strategy is due by October 2028. The 2023 calculation already switched to the standard method for 2027/28. From a base date of April 2027 every year of a five-year calculation falls after the plan period, so the figure the council then applies will shape the result. That figure is the council's to set, and we do not guess at it.

The New Local Plan to 2044

The council gave notice on 22 May 2026 that it had begun a new plan for 2027 to 2044 under the government's new plan-making approach, and consulted on its scope from 13 July 2026. Its timetable sets out the stages still to come:

The January 2027 consultation is the first point at which land is likely to be weighed, so evidence for a site is best prepared by the end of 2026. Those stages are explained in our local plan guide.

The government's review of reorganisation, launched on 7 September 2026, leaves Surrey unaffected, so West Surrey Council still starts in April 2027. A report to the council's Executive in March 2026 noted that any new West Surrey local plan is unlikely to be prepared for some time, which is why Woking is pressing on with its own.

Delivery is close to the line. The Housing Delivery Test 2025 appeared on 17 August 2026, with a new edition each year. At 97%, Woking built 36 fewer homes than required but still cleared the 95% line. A result under 95% would bring back an action plan, like the one prepared in June 2024; under 85% the supply calculation would carry a 20% buffer; and under 75% policy S5 would regard unmet need as shown.

Settlement Sites Now, Safeguarded Land for January 2027

• Sites inside the settlements and previously developed land can be reviewed straight away.
• Safeguarded and larger Green Belt land is best readied for the January 2027 consultation.
• Any site needs its SANG route settled early.