Selling Land in Crawley

• Yards, depots, garages and workshops inside the town, especially where the business is relocating.
• Older commercial or community buildings with land around them, in or near the town centre.
• Deep rear gardens or land behind a row of houses that could be reached by a new drive.
• Land within walking distance of one of the town's railway stations.
• Sites outside the airport safeguarding area and the worst of the aircraft noise.
• Adjoining plots whose owners would consider putting them forward together.

We fund the surveys and reports, including noise, drainage and design, and if permission is refused you keep your property and owe us nothing.

• 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.

Most sites that can take homes in Crawley are inside the built-up area, so the national policy that matters most is S4. Inside a settlement, development should be approved unless its harm substantially outweighs its benefits, and a delivery result of 36% leaves little doubt about the benefit of more homes.

The inspectors' report shows what the plan leans on. The town centre's key opportunity sites have a combined indicative capacity of about 1,500 homes, the continuing development at Forge Wood is described as a major new community, and Tinsley Lane, carried over from the 2015 plan, is allocated for at least 120 homes. The plan also roughly doubles the windfall allowance, from 55 to 100 homes a year, which is its estimate of the smaller sites that no plan can list in advance. Typical windfall plots include:

• Town centre and edge-of-centre land. Older offices, shops and car parks, where the plan expects much of its new housing, often at higher density.
• Garage blocks and backland. Rear courts and garage blocks can take a few homes where access and parking work.
• Wide plots. A house on a generous plot that could be replaced by several homes, or have new homes added behind it.
• Community and institutional buildings that have closed or are being consolidated.
• Small commercial sites away from Manor Royal, where the business has moved on. Manor Royal itself is described by the inspectors as a major employment hub of sub-regional significance.

Our page on small sites and paddocks explains how we look at modest plots. Access is often the deciding issue on a backland site, and our guide to access and ransom strips sets out why.

Because Crawley cannot meet its own need, much of it is being planned in the two districts that surround the town. The Housing Delivery Test applies council by council, so land just over the boundary is judged under that council's result and plan, not Crawley's.

Why Half of 7,505 Comes Out at 3,757

Half of Crawley's 7,505 is 3,752 or 3,753, not the 3,757 in the Horsham modifications. The modifications do not explain the gap, and the likely reason is that Horsham worked from a slightly different version of Crawley's figure. It is five homes across a whole district and changes nothing for a landowner.

Crawley Borough Council has pressed for these schemes to reflect the town's needs. In February 2026 it said any development at Crabbet Park would in reality be an extension of Crawley. In a statement of common ground signed in March 2026, the two councils record that Mid Sussex requires 30% affordable housing on all sites, that Crawley asked for at least 40% at Crabbet Park and a half share of nominations, and that Mid Sussex agreed to test whether a higher share is viable and is open to discussing nomination rights. Growth here crosses council lines. See our West Sussex page and our Horsham District page for the wider picture.

With a plan adopted in October 2024, the changes worth watching in Crawley come less from the council's own timetable than from four things around it.

• The yearly delivery result. The government publishes the test annually, and the latest, the Housing Delivery Test 2025, appeared on 17 August 2026. Every edition averages three years of completions, so a single busy year at Forge Wood or in the town centre shifts it only partly. While it stays below 75%, policy S5 counts the town's need as unmet, and even a higher score would leave the plan's own acknowledgement of unmet need on the record.
• A supply figure, if one appears. The council publishes no separate five-year supply statement, and its latest monitoring report, for 2023/24 and published in November 2025, reports delivery rather than a five-year figure: 148 net homes against the new plan's stepped requirement of 386, a shortfall it puts down mainly to water neutrality. The last five-year figure the council published, in a July 2023 topic paper for the plan's examination, found five and a half years at 31 March 2023, but it was measured against a proposed 400 homes a year that the adopted plan replaced with a lower, stepped requirement, so it no longer describes today's position. With water neutrality withdrawn in October 2025, the next report will show whether the pipeline has recovered. Until a figure is published, the delivery result is the measure of need that counts under S5, and any supply evidence a future application relies on will be tested afresh.
• The neighbours' plans. Half of that unmet need is written into the Horsham plan's proposed main modifications, which are still being examined, and Crabbet Park is an allocation in the Mid Sussex plan, which was still at examination when the two councils signed their statement in March 2026. Until both plans are adopted, the homes meant to serve Crawley remain proposals.
• One council for the north of the county, paused. In May and June 2026 the government consulted on two unitary councils for West Sussex, one of them joining Crawley with Chichester, Horsham and Mid Sussex from April 2028. Before any decision, on 7 September 2026, it put the West Sussex proposals on hold during a national review, and the May 2027 elections will use existing boundaries. Crawley stays the planning authority for the town, so where its homes should go is still settled between three separate plans.

Town Land Now, and the Horsham Examination for Land Beyond

None of this changes the position for land inside the town, where policy S4 applies today. For owners just over the boundary, the outcome of the Horsham examination is likely to matter more than anything decided in Crawley, and the Horsham District page linked above follows its progress. We can review land on either side of the line now.