Selling Land in Wyre Forest

The monitoring report for 2024/25 records 538 net completions against the annual requirement of 276, with a further 457 homes under construction and 692 not started at 31 March 2025. The pattern is unusual:

• 95% on previously developed land in 2024/25, and 87% of all completions since the plan period began in 2016.
• 3,043 homes completed between April 2016 and April 2026, according to the supply report, against a plan average of 276 a year.
• 199 affordable homes completed in 2024/25, across affordable rent, social rent and shared ownership.
• Lea Castle. The report notes that all but one of the completions in Wolverley and Cookley that year were at the former Lea Castle Hospital site.

For owners of yards, depots, workshops and former commercial land in and around the three towns, this is the strongest route in the district. Policy S4 supports development within settlements unless the harm would substantially outweigh the benefits, and in the Green Belt previously developed land is treated differently from open fields. The kinds of site that suit this route are described on our brownfield land and yards page.

Plans must be reviewed at least every five years, and the council has already begun a new one under the government's gateway process. It consulted on the scope of the plan until 7 July 2026, and its timetable placed the first gateway, a self-assessment of readiness, in August or September 2026.

The scoping report states the key number plainly: a new housing requirement of a minimum of 584 homes a year, with the plan period extended beyond 2036. Whatever the final figure, the new plan is likely to need land that is not allocated today.

Two earlier steps shape what comes next:

• A call for sites ran from 1 October to 24 December 2025 and drew 105 sites, which the council published on a map in July 2026. It stresses that this is a land availability exercise, that appearing on the map does not mean a site is suitable, and that no decisions have been made.
• A spatial issues and local priorities consultation ran to 28 September 2026. The next stage in the council's timetable is a consultation on proposed plan content and evidence in January and February 2027, where its first thinking on how much land it needs, and where, should appear.

Our guide to call for sites and local plans explains how submitted land is assessed.

A New Yardstick for Supply

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 make no forecast, 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 Plan Timetable

The Next Delivery Test

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. Next year's edition matters far less here than the plan's birthday.

North Worcestershire, Paused

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.

What This Means for Timing

• 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.