Selling Land in Horsham District

• Fields of 2 acres or more on the edge of Horsham, Southwater, Billingshurst, Henfield, Storrington, Pulborough and the larger villages.
• Land that sits well against existing homes, rather than out on its own in open country.
• Sites with a road frontage or a realistic way to reach one.
• Land mostly in Flood Zone 1, outside the National Park and the High Weald.
• Sites where water neutrality stopped an earlier approach.
• Larger holdings that could form part of later phases of growth.

Many of the holdings we see in this rural district are working farms, and an option does not stop the farming. You keep grazing or cropping the fields until permission is secured and we complete at the fixed price agreed at the start, which is set above what the land is worth to you today. Every planning cost falls on us, if the application fails you owe nothing, and we contribute to your own solicitor's and land agent's fees so getting it done properly costs you nothing. How this fits around a farm business is described on our farmland 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 plan has had a long examination. Its first hearings, in December 2024, were halted, and local reporting records that the inspector at the time raised a number of concerns and suggested the plan be withdrawn. A new inspector, Jonathan Bore, restarted the examination with stage one hearings in April 2026, and his post-hearing letter of 7 May 2026 led to a set of main modifications to make the plan sound.

1. 13 July to 24 August 2026. Consultation on the main modifications.
2. 13 to 23 October 2026. Stage two hearings, with reserve dates set aside.
3. Early 2027. The council's stated aim for adoption, after the inspector's final report.

A Bigger Number, and a New Strategic Site

When the hearings resumed in April 2026, local reporting put the requirement at 17,828 homes, the district's own need plus half of Crawley's, with documents showing a shortfall of 2,398 against it. The modified requirement of 18,712 homes is made up of Horsham's own need of 14,071, half of Crawley's unmet need at 3,757, and 884 homes towards unmet need along the south coast. It is stepped: 499 homes a year in years four and five, 1,100 a year in years six to ten, and 1,601 a year from year eleven.

To meet it, the council has proposed a new strategic site at Adversane, near Billingshurst, for about 3,200 homes, of which around 1,425 would be built within the plan period. The modifications say it was chosen partly because it identifies land for a secondary school and is relatively close to Billingshurst station. It is one of 19 new sites, which local reporting puts at around 6,664 homes in all, including 500 north of Horsham, a northern cluster of 450 at Ashington and two sites at Henfield. The existing strategic allocations, Land West of Ifield, Land North West of Southwater and Land East of Billingshurst, remain.

On 16 September 2026 the inspector confirmed that the plan is being examined against the September 2023 version of national policy, because its pre-submission consultation took place before the cut-off for later versions. Once adopted, it will replace the 2015 framework as the basis for decisions.

For an owner selling land near Adversane, Billingshurst or Ashington, the modifications are the document to read, because they show which new sites the inspector is being asked to accept.

A 44% result and a land supply of 1.7 years put Horsham firmly in the group of councils whose housing shortfall counts in favour of edge-of-settlement schemes under policy S5 of the August 2026 framework. Where Green Belt covers the countryside, that route is closed to most fields; here it is not, so a paddock behind Partridge Green or a field on the edge of Billingshurst can be judged on its merits. The questions are whether the land sits hard against the village rather than out in open country, whether its roads, schools and surgery can take the numbers, and whether the homes would be built in time to help meet that need.

Scale is where many edge-of-village schemes succeed or fail. A few dozen homes on the edge of a larger village is judged very differently from several hundred, and school places are a live issue here, as the choice of Adversane shows. The wording of S5, and how it applies in a district without Green Belt, is unpacked in the 2026 national planning framework guide.

Most of what happens next depends on the October hearings and the inspector's report that follows them. Three other things deserve a place on the watch list.

Supply and Completions

The council's monitoring report for 2024/25 puts its housing land supply at 1.7 years at 1 April 2025. It measures against the government's standard method, 1,338 homes a year, with a 20% buffer because of its delivery record, so it needs 8,028 homes over five years and can count 2,742. The same report shows net completions falling from 769 in 2020/21 to 328 in 2024/25, with only a brief rise in 2023/24, and says water neutrality had a significant impact on the ability of development to come forward from September 2021.

How the Delivery Test Will Move

The test trails those completions. It is published once a year, the latest being the Housing Delivery Test 2025 on 17 August 2026, and each edition averages three years, so the next one will still be made up largely of years when neutrality held building back. While the result stays under 75%, policy S5 treats the district's need as unmet. After adoption, the test's rules measure delivery against the plan's own requirement where that is lower than the government's figure, and because the modified requirement starts low and steps up, later results could look quite different. That is a reason not to leave a well related site until the plan is in place.

Reorganisation is on hold. The same monitoring report expected Horsham District Council to be replaced by a new unitary authority by April 2028. A government announcement on 7 September 2026 paused the West Sussex proposals pending a wider review, and the May 2027 elections will use the existing council areas. Horsham remains the planning authority, and an adopted plan would stay in force whatever structure eventually follows.

For a field outside the proposed allocations, the case can be made now, while supply is short. For land inside them, the October sessions are where boundaries and numbers are settled, and we can have the survey work under way at our cost before then.