Selling Land in Wyre Forest

• Yards, depots, workshops and former industrial land in Kidderminster, Stourport and Bewdley.
• Old commercial plots, depots or hardstanding out in the Green Belt, where the use is lawful.
• Fields on the edges of Kidderminster, Stourport and Bewdley that could be put forward to the new plan.
• Land around the inset villages of Blakedown, Cookley, Fairfield and Wilden, including near Blakedown station.
• Infill plots in washed over villages such as Chaddesley Corbett and Wolverley.
• Larger holdings able to carry affordable homes, open space and new infrastructure.

Where land is best suited to the new plan, our work starts well before any consultation, with access, drainage, ecology, landscape and Green Belt evidence, all at our cost. The price is fixed when we sign, set higher than the land is worth today, and we complete once planning permission has been secured. You keep farming or using the land in the meantime. Our how it works page sets out each step.

• 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 council's five-year supply report covers 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031. Because the plan is less than five years old, it tests supply against the plan's own requirement, set in policy SP1:

A year earlier the council's Authority Monitoring Report gave 9.3 years at 1 April 2025, so the margin has narrowed a little but remains wide.

Two Delivery Figures, Both High

The supply report justifies its 5% buffer with the three years 2020/21 to 2022/23, when the district delivered 1,140 homes against a requirement of 615, a score of 185%. The government's Housing Delivery Test 2025, published on 17 August 2026, covers the later period of April 2022 to March 2025 and gives 212%. On delivery alone, either edition earns the lowest buffer.

The 20% Buffer Rule From July 2026

A newer rule also matters. For planning decisions taken since 1 July 2026, national policy asks for a 20% buffer in any district whose requirement is under five years old, was tested at examination before the December 2024 framework and stands at no more than 80% of the standard method figure. The report quotes the rule but does not say whether it applies. On the face of it Wyre Forest meets all three conditions: its plan dates from April 2022, and 276 is under half of 584. Applying 20% to the council's own figures gives a requirement of 1,720 homes and roughly 7.7 years, still well clear of five.

What This Means for an Application Today

With a result of 212% and supply well above five years, neither of the usual ways of showing unmet need is available here. Policy S5 of the August 2026 framework, the route for well related land beyond a settlement's edge, therefore has little to work with, and it does not apply in the Green Belt in any case. The same absence of evidenced need makes a grey belt case for housing hard to win at present. That is not the end of the story, because the yardstick is about to change.

The council's Green Belt review describes the district's Green Belt as part of the West Midlands Green Belt that checks the spread of the Birmingham conurbation, and gives it a local job too: preventing Bewdley, Kidderminster and Stourport from merging with one another. The towns are drawn out of it, as are Cookley, Fairfield, Blakedown and Wilden, while Chaddesley Corbett, Wolverley and Upper Arley are washed over by it. Which of those a piece of land sits in or near decides its route:

1. Inside the towns and inset villages. Policy S4 applies, and small sites, gardens and backland can be looked at on their merits now.
2. Previously developed land in the Green Belt. Lawful yards and commercial sites have their own route, which does not depend on the housing numbers. Buildings used for farming do not count.
3. Washed over villages. National policy allows limited infilling in villages in the Green Belt, which can suit a single plot in Chaddesley Corbett or Wolverley.
4. Open Green Belt fields. In the gaps between the towns the case is hardest. Elsewhere a field may prove to be grey belt, but for now, as set out above, the new plan is the realistic route. Our grey belt guide sets out the tests.

The adopted plan reaches its fifth anniversary on 26 April 2027. The council's own supply report explains that once strategic policies are more than five years old, supply must be assessed against local housing need under the standard method, and that in Wyre Forest this would effectively double the annual need from 276 to 584 homes. Simple arithmetic shows why the date matters: five years at 584 a year is 2,920 homes before any buffer, more than the 2,663 counted today. We would not predict the result, because a new statement will count different sites at a later date, but a result below five years would be evidence of unmet need, to be weighed under policy S5 for well placed land outside the Green Belt, and would usually satisfy the need test for grey belt housing.

The new plan itself runs on this timetable:

Delivery Well Clear, and North Worcestershire Paused

At 212% in the Housing Delivery Test 2025, published 17 August 2026, none of the test's consequences reaches Wyre Forest. It would take a fall under 95% to require an action plan, under 85% to lift the buffer to 20% and under 75% to bring S5 into play with no supply argument at all. The next edition of the test matters far less here than the plan's fifth birthday.

In July 2026 the government decided that Wyre Forest, Bromsgrove and Redditch would form a North Worcestershire council from April 2028, as the Bromsgrove Standard reported. Since then a national review, launched on 7 September 2026, has frozen the process, which the Redditch Standard reported applies to Worcestershire, and the government has said elections in May 2027 will use existing council areas. With examination set for late 2028, a new council would have inherited the plan. For now the district council runs it.

Brownfield Now, Grey Belt and Edge Land Before April 2027

• Brownfield sites and land inside the towns can be looked at now, on their own merits.
• Fields for the new plan need evidence ready for the January 2027 consultation, whether or not they were in the 2025 call for sites.
• Grey belt and edge-of-town land is worth preparing ahead of April 2027, when the supply test changes.