Selling Land in Warwick District

• Yards, depots and former commercial land with lawful buildings or hardstanding, in or out of the Green Belt.
• Plots and backland inside Leamington, Warwick, Whitnash and Kenilworth.
• Land beside the growth villages, such as Barford, Bishop's Tachbrook, Cubbington and Hampton Magna.
• Green Belt fields that are enclosed by roads, railways or existing homes and do little to keep towns apart.
• Holdings near Hatton, Warwick Parkway or Kenilworth stations, or next to the joint plan's growth locations.

Green Belt and grey belt cases rest on detailed landscape and openness evidence, alongside the usual access, drainage and ecology work. That work is commissioned and paid for by us. The option price is agreed before any of it begins and is pitched above the land's present value. The land remains in your use throughout, and if permission never comes it stays yours with nothing to repay.

• 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 2017 plan did more than meet the district's own need. Policy DS6 provides for at least 16,776 homes from 2011 to 2029, and 5,976 of those, in the years 2017/18 to 2028/29, are there to meet housing need that Coventry cannot meet inside its own boundary. Since the plan, adopted on 20 September 2017, passed five years old in September 2022, supply has been tested against the government's standard method for the district instead, now 1,085 homes a year. But the council still treats the Coventry homes as belonging to Coventry, so it sets a matching share of its expected completions aside. Its five-year supply paper, dated December 2025, shows the effect:

The 45.36% is Coventry's part of the plan's requirement for 2017/18 to 2028/29: 5,976 homes out of 13,176. Without that deduction, the same pipeline would come to roughly three and a half years.

Behind the 4,080 are 3,192 homes with planning permission, 272 on allocated sites that still lack it, 505 from windfall sites and 111 homes' worth of student rooms and care beds, converted at 2.4 students and 1.9 residents to a home. The council makes no deduction for permissions that might lapse, and counts nothing yet from the small urban sites it identified in 2015/16. The buffer stays at 5% because the delivery test result the paper relied on, 104%, is above the 85% that would trigger 20%. For context, the 2017 plan allocated land for 10,659 homes in all under policy DS10, leaving windfall and other sites to make up the rest of its 16,776.

Where the Method Came From

The approach was argued out at an inquiry, sitting from October 2023 to January 2024, into 83 homes at the Warwickshire Police headquarters site in Leek Wootton. The council had put its supply at about 6,112 homes, while the developer said 4,772, which it described as 7.12 years, or 3.89 years once Coventry was taken into account. The inspector accepted the Coventry share as a blunt instrument but the only logical way to reflect the plan's strategy in the figure, found a supply of 4.01 years, and allowed the appeal in May 2024. The council's latest figure applies the same share to a smaller pipeline.

The Leek Wootton decision matters to anyone selling land in Warwick District because it settled how the figure is worked out, and the council's later figures follow the same method.

The 2017 plan directs growth to Warwick, Leamington, Whitnash and Kenilworth and to the southern edge of Coventry, then to growth villages where it allocated sites, including Barford, Bishop's Tachbrook, Baginton, Cubbington and Hampton Magna. To make room, it took land out of the Green Belt at Baginton, Burton Green, Cubbington, Hatton Park, Hampton Magna, Leek Wootton and Kingswood. For villages still in the Green Belt, policy H11 allows only limited infill housing. The practical routes are:

1. Within the towns and growth villages. Gardens, backland and underused plots inside the built-up area, judged under policy S4.
2. Previously developed land in the Green Belt. Yards, depots and redundant commercial sites, which Green Belt policy treats apart from open fields. Our brownfield and yards page covers what we look for.
3. Grey belt fields. Land that contributes little to the Green Belt purposes, now that need is evidenced.
4. Through the joint plan. Open land that needs Green Belt boundaries redrawn, where the South Warwickshire Local Plan is the main route.

Eleven Neighbourhood Plans

The council's monitoring report lists made neighbourhood plans for Barford, Whitnash, Baginton and Bubbenhall, Leek Wootton and Guy's Cliffe, Budbrooke, Kenilworth, Radford Semele, Royal Leamington Spa, Bishop's Tachbrook, Burton Green and, the latest it records, Cubbington in December 2025. A made neighbourhood plan sits within the statutory development plan, so the parish's own choices about the siting of new homes carry weight in each local decision.

After a final consultation from 21 July to 8 September 2026, the two councils aim to submit the plan to the government by 31 December 2026. The earlier preferred options stage drew more than 22,000 responses, a sign of how closely the examination will be followed. Until it is adopted, the 2017 plan and the shortfall set the terms for applications.

Coventry's Share, Kings Hill and a Southern Council on Hold

Supply is the figure to follow. The 2025 paper appeared in December 2025, eight months after its base date, and rests on a housing trajectory that takes in the latest updates from the companies preparing and building each site. The next one, at 1 April 2026, will show whether the Coventry deduction and the standard method still leave the district well short. Kings Hill, allocated south of Coventry in 2017, was expected to be marketed during 2026 with construction from 2028, so it adds little in the near term.

The government repeats the delivery test every year, and the current Housing Delivery Test 2025 was published on 17 August 2026. At 128% the district is clear of every consequence: an action plan follows a result under 95%, and a 20% buffer one under 85%. We will not guess the score.

Reorganisation is on hold. In July 2026 the government chose a two-council model for Warwickshire, with a southern unitary covering Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick. Since the national pause of 7 September 2026, Stratford-on-Avon District Council has confirmed that the Warwickshire proposals are among those on hold for review, and that the May 2027 elections will use today's council boundaries. Warwick District Council remains the body deciding applications and taking the joint plan forward.

Town and Brownfield Sites Now, Grey Belt While the Plan Is Examined

• Previously developed land and plots in the towns can be looked at now, and the shortfall adds weight to them.
• Grey belt fields are best tested while the joint plan is still at examination, since adoption will bring new Green Belt boundaries and a fresh supply position.
• Open Green Belt land that needs its boundary redrawn follows the joint plan and its later reviews. The typical span of each stage is in our guide to how long planning takes.