Selling Land in Solihull

• Fields on the edge of Knowle, Dorridge, Balsall Common, Hampton in Arden, Meriden or Hockley Heath that lie outside the most important parts of the Meriden Gap.
• Land around Shirley, Dickens Heath and the Blythe area that sits against existing homes or the new allocations.
• Yards, depots and plots with lawful buildings in the Green Belt.
• Garage courts, backland and larger gardens inside Solihull, Shirley, Olton and the north of the borough.
• Holdings inside or next to one of the draft plan's broad locations.

Land that plays a strong role in the gap between the cities, or that lies far from a village's shops, schools and buses, faces the hardest tests, and we will tell you so. When the review shows a real case, the Green Belt, highways, ecology and drainage studies and the application itself are ours to fund, under an option whose price is settled with you before work starts, while the land stays in your use until completion. For larger holdings, our farmland page explains how we look at the whole farm.

• 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.

Solihull fails both national tests. The council's five-year land supply schedule, part of its Authority Monitoring Report and published in December 2024 with a base date of 1 April 2024, finds 2.13 years. No later statement appears on its monitoring page, and the October 2026 topic paper gives no five-year figure.

More than two fifths of that supply, 1,256 homes, came from allocations in a draft plan withdrawn in October 2024, two months before the statement appeared.

Completions Have Fallen Year on Year

The council's land supply topic paper of October 2026 charts completions at 828 homes in 2021/22, 607 in 2022/23, 451 in 2023/24, 287 in 2024/25 and 192 in 2025/26. The middle three years make the 1,345 homes the Housing Delivery Test 2025 records against 2,516 needed, a result of 53%.

That result brings the August 2026 framework's strongest signal: under 75%, policy S5 counts the need for homes as evidenced, and under 85% a 20% buffer replaces the 5% the council used. The supply gap adds evidence of unmet need, which is weighed, not an automatic finding. Yet S5 has little open land to act on outside the Green Belt here, so grey belt and the policy S4 test inside settlements matter more.

For an owner looking to sell land for development in Solihull, falling completions are the real story: the council needs sites that can be built soon.

Policy S5 does not reach the Green Belt, so across two thirds of the borough grey belt is the route that counts. Grey belt housing needs evidence that the homes are needed, usually a supply under five years or a delivery score beneath 75%; Solihull has both, and its draft plan accepts the test is likely to be met. Larger schemes must also meet the Golden Rules, including a higher affordable share.

What the Council's Own Green Belt Study Found

Arup's Green Belt Assessment for the council, dated 2 July 2026, carried out 99 assessments and identified 72 parcels as potential grey belt. It found four areas of fundamental importance, three within the Meriden Gap and one south and south west of Solihull and Shirley.

1. Fields at a village or suburb edge. In a potential grey belt parcel, the case rests on its access and its effect on the Green Belt that remains.
2. Land deep in the Meriden Gap. Inside an area of fundamental importance, a grey belt case is much harder, whatever the supply.
3. Green Belt yards. Previously developed land has its own route; our brownfield and yards page shows the sites we mean.
4. Plots in Shirley, Chelmsley Wood or Solihull. Policy S4 applies: permission unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits.

The Council Expects Grey Belt Schemes to Keep Coming

The draft plan says the grey belt tests are "likely to be met until (at least) when this plan is adopted around the end of 2027/beginning of 2028". Around 20 major housing applications, with over 4,000 homes, were awaiting decision when it appeared, and it counts 1,000 homes from short-term grey belt windfalls.

Location still decides each case. On 30 October 2026 an inspector dismissed appeal 6014214, for permission in principle for up to four self-build homes in the garden of Earlesmere House on Warings Green Road. Planning Geek's report of the decision records that both sides treated the land as grey belt and that the council's supply figure was 2.13 years, yet the site was found unsustainable, with everyday trips likely to depend on the car along narrow, unlit lanes. Our grey belt guide sets out the purposes a field is judged against.

For anyone selling greenfield land in the Green Belt here, the council expects well placed grey belt sites to be needed before adoption, so the work lies in proving your field is one, with lanes that lead somewhere useful.

A Deadline the Minister Pressed For

The housing minister wrote on 11 December 2025, as the council weighed the new plan-making system, that it was "disappointing that SMBC are no longer committed to submission of the plan by December 2026". The council kept the existing system. Its Local Development Scheme of July 2026 puts submission by 31 December 2026, which it calls a challenging timescale, hearings in spring 2027 and adoption in autumn 2027; the draft plan puts adoption around the end of 2027 or the beginning of 2028. Our guide to how long planning takes explains each stage.

Supply, Delivery and the Stepped Target

The draft plan accepts that without an appropriate plan the council cannot show five years of land, and its stepped requirement of 400 homes a year to 2028 would ask far less in the early years than its 1,289 average. The next Housing Delivery Test should add 2025/26, with its 192 completions, in place of 2022/23; we offer no forecast. The regional strategy is expected in draft in summer to autumn 2027, on a provisional timetable.

• Grey belt fields and Green Belt yards are best looked at now, while the council itself expects the need test to be met.
• Land in a broad location will usually come forward through a later plan, and is worth getting ready for it.
• Sites inside the built-up area can be looked at under policy S4 at any time.

For owners thinking of selling land in Solihull, the shortfall carries most weight before adoption, and the examination is the milestone to plan around.