Selling Land in Rugby

• Fields outside the Green Belt that adjoin Rugby or one of the nine main rural settlements.
• Parcels in the Green Belt towards Coventry that are boxed in by roads, the railway or existing buildings.
• Yards, depots, former works and other land with lawful buildings or hardstanding, in or out of the Green Belt.
• Garden land, paddocks and plots inside the villages and the town.
• Larger holdings for the next review of the plan, once the 2025 to 2042 plan is in place.

Every one of these needs evidence before an application, from transport and drainage to layout, and design above all, since a 2026 appeal in the town was dismissed because of its design even though the council was short of land. We pay for all of it and take the planning risk, under an option agreed at a fixed price at the outset, set higher than the land is worth to you today. You keep using the land until completion, and if no permission is granted you keep it and owe nothing. The how it works page explains the stages; small plots are covered on our paddocks and small sites page.

• 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 adopted plan reached its fifth birthday in June 2024. From then on, national policy required the council to measure its supply against local housing need under the standard method instead of the plan's own requirement, a figure the council's statement puts at 636 homes a year. The council's position statement at 1 April 2025 set out what that meant. It records 1,218 more homes built between 2011 and 2025 than the plan required, but leaves that surplus out, citing national planning guidance, and says that against the plan's requirement with past delivery counted it would have shown 6.35 years. Against the standard method it claimed 4.16 years.

That figure was tested at an inquiry into St Modwen Homes' appeal for 115 homes on a former football pitch and tennis courts north of Rounds Gardens, in the town. The inspector's decision of 13 March 2026 took 507 homes out of the count: 200 at Houlton that had been expected in 2029/30, because the inspector judged the rest of that allocation would arrive about a year later than the council forecast, and 307 at South West Rugby, which the inspector described as appearing "less proactive, with comparatively less infrastructure in place". The council accepted the result in a March 2026 addendum to its statement:

The appellant had argued for an even lower figure by cutting Rugby's supply by 23% for the homes the old plan provided towards Coventry's needs. The inspector saw "no logical justification" for that, since supply under a plan past its fifth year is judged against Rugby's own local housing need, not the old plan's figure. The inspector also added that, given how early the plan review then was, the position was "unlikely to shift with any significance any time soon".

That remark is the useful part for anyone selling land in Rugby: the inspector did not expect the position to change quickly, although the council's own projection, set out below, looks to five years by April 2028.

Building Has Slowed From Its Peak

The council's monitoring report for 2025/26 shows completions falling back from a peak in 2022/23:

The 505 homes of 2025/26 are the first year in this run below the 636 a year the standard method now asks for. Past building does not decide the supply test in any case, which looks forward at what can be shown to start within five years. Affordable homes fell further: 16 were completed in 2025/26, with one more acquired, 3.37% of all new homes, against the 20% on brownfield and 30% on greenfield sites the monitoring report measures them by.

The submission plan sets a requirement of 10,812 homes from 2025 to 2042, 636 a year, the same as the standard method. Its supply comes to 11,729, which the council describes as an 8.5% buffer over the whole plan:

South West Rugby is planned as a new neighbourhood of around 4,000 homes with employment land, served by a spine road that includes the Homestead Link from the A426 to Coventry Road west of Dunchurch. Rugby town stays the main focus, and the nine main rural settlements are Binley Woods, Brinklow, Clifton upon Dunsmore, Dunchurch, Long Lawford, Ryton on Dunsmore, Stretton on Dunsmore, Wolston and Wolvey.

The New Allocations

• Long Lawford: 400 homes on land at Long Lawford and 250 at Lawford Fields Farm.
• Brinklow: 250 south of Rugby Road and 75 at West Farm and Home Farm.
• Wolvey: 150 north of the B4109 and 60 on Coventry Road.
• Clifton upon Dunsmore: 80 on Newton Road, 60 north of Lilbourne Road and 10 on North Road.
• Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Wolston and Ryton-on-Dunsmore: 113, 95 and 37 homes across their sites.
• Rugby town: the largest new sites include 285 at Newton Manor Lane, Brownsover, 250 south of Crick Road at Houlton and 200 at Rugby Central Shopping Centre.

The plan alters Green Belt boundaries to make room for some of this. Its affordable housing policy otherwise asks for 20% in the Rugby urban area and 30% elsewhere, with a 70% social rent and 30% shared ownership split. If you farm near one of these villages, our farmland page sets out what we consider on a whole holding.